My Hero Project
MY HERO is a not for
profit educational web project that celebrates the best of humanity.
Their mission is to enlighten and inspire people of all ages with an
ever-growing internet archive of hero stories from around the world. MY
HERO uses current web technologies to provide a unique educational
experience that promotes literacy and cross cultural communication.
At this
site, you will find information about many, many of the people who went
over and beyond to do something special. We strongly recommend
that you take a look at the Hero Children's page
of the site to learn more about what great kids just like you, your
peers, are doing to help make the world and the human condition better!
Angel in the Outfield
- Eddie Garza
People
Magazine, May 31, 2004
by Thomas Fields-Meyer and Siobhan
Morrisey in Homestead.
Teen Eddie Garza brings
baseball – and hope – to the children of
migrant workers.
When Eddie Garza drives up the South Dade Labor Camp in his SUV, he’s
like a Pied Piper on wheels. Kids of all ages emerge from their
homes – a drab collection of cinderblock boxes – and chase after him
through the camp’s narrow roads, yelling, “Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!”
Garza, 18, greets each one by name. The son of former migrant
workers, he grew up near camps like this one in Homestead, Fla., where
seasonal and migrant workers, mostly of Mexican descent, pick fruit and
vegetables and make their homes. On visits throughout his
childhood, Garza noticed that the children of the workers spent much of
their free time sitting around bored. “The kids had nothing to
do; the playground was dangerous,” he says. “It had no
swings. The slide had a big hole in it.” So Garza, an ace
outfielder on his high school baseball team, decided to take
action. In August 2001 he started a free baseball camp, offering
the labor-camp kids instruction in batting, fielding – and fun.
“Through baseball,” he says, “I can teach them many things.”
Lesson 1: There’s more to life than picking produce – a powerful
message for kids facing significant obstacles to success. Armando
Bustos, 13 is typical of Garza’s players. One of three children
of Mexican parents, he was among the first to enroll in the baseball
camp. “It helped me stay off drugs and off the streets,” says the
sixth grader. “It’s better to do something than to do nothing.”
For his first camp, Barza borrowed $350 from his parents for T-shirts
and scrounged gloves and hats from friends. Though 20 kids had
signed up, only 11 showed. “We were like the Bad News Bears,” he
says. “I learned to be very patient.” He preserved and now
runs three weeklong camps annually for around 25 kids aged 7 to 15,
funded by $500 in donations. “He does this almost without any
fanfare,” says Patrick Snay, headmaster of Gulliver Preparatory School
inn Pinecrest, Fla., where Garza is a senior with a B-plus average and
a varsity right-fielder. “He’s reticent and shy. He really
feels it’s part of his lot to help other people.”
That altruistic drive came in large part from his parents. Born
just north of the Mexican border in Texas, Cipriano Garza, Jr., 56, one
of nine children, traveled to 34 states picking produce with his own
parents. Tough few of his peers complete high school, Cipriano
went to college on a track-and-field scholarship now runs the Migrant
Education Program for the Miami-Dade County public schools. In
1981 he married Mexican-born Maria, 44, the youngest of five children
of migrant workers who, in the 1970s, lived at the same South Dade camp
where her son now teaches baseball. She, too, defied expectations
by going to college, eventually becoming a labor activist to help
people like her parents. “Eddie hasn’t fallen far from the tree,”
says actor Edward James Olmos, who met the Garzas in the early 1980s
and is Eddie’s godfather. “These people have not only sacrificed
their lives but have given to the community they’ve come from.”
When Eddie first brought up the idea of starting a baseball camp,
however, his father was skeptical. “I told him these people get
lied to all the time,” says Cipriano. “If you’re going to do
this, you need [to make] a commitment.” Cipriano has no doubts
now. Like his parents before him, Eddie has been an inspiration
to brothers Cipriano III, 14, and Alex, 13, who have started another
baseball camp. But Eddie has no plans to abandon his own when he
goes to the University of Miami in August. “No money can make up
for the joy these kids give me, he says. “The biggest reward is
the smiles on their faces.”
Free The Children is an
international network of children helping children at a local, national
and international level through representation, leadership and action.
It was founded by Craig Kielburger in 1995, when he was 12 years old.
The primary goal of the organization is not only to free children from
poverty and exploitation, but to also free children and young people
from the idea that they are powerless to bring about positive social
change and to improve the lives of their peers.
Free the Children is unlike any other children's charity in the world,
as it is an organization by, of and for children that fully embodies
the notion that children and young people themselves can be leaders of
today in creating a more just, equitable and sustainable world.
About Craig
Craig first became a spokesperson for children's rights when he was 12
years old. Searching for the comics in the local paper, a front-page
article caught his attention. He read about a young boy from Pakistan
who was sold into bondage as a carpet weaver, escaped and was murdered
for speaking out against child labor. Craig gathered a group of friends
and founded the organization Free the Children.
Craig, now 21 years of age, has traveled to more than 40 countries
visiting street and working children and speaking out in defense of
children's rights. He frequently addresses business groups, government
bodies, educators, unions and students around the world. He has
advocated on behalf of children in meetings with political and
religious leaders including Prime Ministers and Presidents, CEOs of
major corporations, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Queen Elizabeth
II and the late Mother Teresa. Craig’s work has been featured on major
television programs in North and South America and Europe, including
CNN, the Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes.
Craig’s first book, Free The Children was published by Harper Collins
in the United States and has been translated into 8 languages. Craig
and his older brother Marc, a Rhodes scholar currently studying at
Oxford, have co-authored ' Take Action – A Guide to Active Citizenship
for Youth’ which was released in February 2002 by Gage Educational
Publishing.
Free the Children has grown into an influential international
children’s organization with hundreds of thousands of young people in
more than 35 countries participated in its activities. Youth members of
FTC have raised funds for the construction of more than 400 primary
schools in the rural areas of developing nations, providing education
every day to over 30,000 children. They have distributed approximately
175,000 school kits and in excess of 5 million dollars worth of medical
supplies to needy families. FTC currently supports portable water
projects, health clinics, alternative income cooperatives and primary
schools in 21 developing nations.
FTC’s advocacy campaigns have led Canada, Mexico and Italy to pass
legislation in order to better protect sexually abused children. It has
lobbied, in addition, corporations to adopt labels for child-labor free
products. Free The Children was selected in 2001 by the United Nations
and The Office of the Special Representative for Children in Armed
Conflict to be the lead NGO coordinating youth outreach for the decade
of peace and non-violence towards children.
In 1999, brothers Craig and Marc co-founded Leaders Today. Teams of
trainers travel to schools, communities and religious groups to host
academies designed to empower youth with the leadership, teamwork,
effective communication and self-confidence skills needed to become
active global citizens. To date, Leaders Today has provided leadership
training to over 300,000 young people throughout North America. In
addition to its domestic leadership programs, Leaders Today operates
summer and march-break trips for youth interested in volunteering in
India, Nicaragua and Thailand, as well as leadership/ volunteer
retreats to its own centers in Kenya and Arizona.
Iqbal Masih – A
Fighter Against Child Labor
Iqbal Masih, born in Pakistan,
was sold as a slave at the age of four by his parents to a carpet
manufacturer for 600 rupees (about $1 US), so that his father could pay
for his elder brother’s wedding. Iqbal worked 12 hours a day at a
loom weaving carpets. He was regularly beaten and abused. He
earned one rupee a day. After six years his family's debt had risen,
and he owed his boss 13,000 rupees.
When he was 10, Iqbal heard
about a meeting of the Bonded Liberation Front of Pakistan (BLLF), a
group fighting against child labor. Escaping with several other
children, he made an impromptu speech about the cruelties of his owner
- a speech later printed in the local newsspapers. Iqbal refused to
return to the carpet factory, contacted a BLLF lawyer and obtained a
letter of freedom. He subsequently attended a school run by BLLF
for former bonded laborers and frequently spoke at meetings despite
threats of violence. He later became president of the children's
wing of BLLF.
Among other awards, Iqbal was
presented with the Reebok Human Rights Youth in Action Award in Boston,
USA, and addressed schools in Sweden on the subject of child
slavery. An eloquent and powerful speaker, Iqbal wanted to become
a lawyer: "So that I can fight for the rights of children like me."
Iqbal was awarded a scholarship
in America, for further education when he finished school in Pakistan.
He also appeared in The Carpet, a film about bonded child labor, which
was shown around the world.
On April 16, 1996, at the age of
12, Iqbal Misah was shot and killed while riding his bicycle.
Although his assassin has never been caught, it is widely believed that
Iqbal was murdered by the Pakistani carpet mafia to silence him from
speaking out against child slavery.
Child Labor Resources:
Children Workers in Asia
http://www.cwa.loxinfo.co.th/vol11-1/IQBAL.htm
The World’s Children’s Prize for
the Rights of Children
http://www.childrensworld.org/engiqbal/index.asp
Ocean Hero – Christian Miller
When
he was eight years old, Christian Miller decided to
make a difference in the fate of an endangered species - the sea
turtles native
to the beaches near his home in Palm Beach, Fla.
Shortly
after his family moved there in 1984, Christian found a baby sea turtle
dead on
the beach. In his search for answers about the small creature and why
it had
died, he contacted the states Department of Environmental Resources,
and soon
became the youngest person ever to be trained to monitor and protect
these
imperiled amphibians!
"The
best reward", he says, "is seeing the
turtles crawl toward the ocean and swim away." But Christian, now 17,
has
received other rewards, too. He was recently named a finalist in this
years
Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and he has addressed the United
Nations
General Assembly in New York
as part of a U.N. Environmental Programs Global Youth Forum.
From: Ocean Planet, a
1995 Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/psk_hero.html
Disclaimer : This website is offered for
reference
only and does not necessarily support the views of any link contained
herein,
nor is it responsible for their content. Kids-in-Crisis policy does not
permit endorsement of private services or products. Any such provider
listed
in this website is listed for the informational content of their site
and
not as an endorsement!
|