Virtual March Against Child Labour

This page is maintained as a tribute to the work of the Broad Meadows students and as a reminder of what can be achieved through determined, collaborative work. Broad Meadows were successful in collecting more than 3000 email messages against child labour. The messages were presented to the 86th International Labor Conference in Geneva in June, 1998.


As part of the I*EARN Fight Against Child Labour Project your support of the Broad Meadows students is urged.The message below explains the aims of the Broadmeadows students - to have a "virtual March in support of the Global March Against Child Labour". Each email message counts as a mile in a "march" across the USA in support of the Global March. This is a magnificent opportunity for the I*EARN family to use its network of students and teachers and the links we have to support their efforts.

Send an email message of support NOW!


To : Dear Friend of the "School for Iqbal" campaign

Date : 12 / 27 / 97
From : Student Leaders of "A Bullet Can't Kill A Dream:
The Kids Campaign to Build A School for Iqbal"

Re : Now is the hour to raise your voice AGAIN against child labor !

With a lot of help from thousands of students and others in all 50 U.S. states and 28 countries, we did it ! We built that School for Iqbal in Pakistan.

It is open and giving education, love and hope to 252 poor, working children who never went to school before. The "School for Iqbal" is open, but more needs to be done for the millions still trapped in forced, child labor.

In the next 6 months, we have an excellent opportunity to raise our voices to take another online step , against child labor.

Representatives of almost every country in the world are headed in June 1998 to Geneva where new, international child labor laws will be written and adopted at the (ILO ) International Labor Organization's Summit on Child Labor. Now is the hour to raise our voices in an electronic chorus AGAINST CHILD LABOR. Pressure now will guarantee strong agreements in June in Geneva.

To pressure the delegates attending the June 1998 ILO Convention, adults and others are planning a Global March across 5 continents Against Child Labor . This global march to Geneva will publicly pressure the policy makers in Geneva to write new laws which will help end child labor.

It’s great that adults are having a Global March to Geneva Against Child Labor, but what about us ? We made a suggestion to the global march organizers that they should include young people in the Global March. The march organizers listened to us.

As a result, we want to announce that together with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, DC , and other groups, we have created "The Young People’s Online March Against Child Labor," for those too young or unable to march.

We invite you to join us NOW in a virtual march against child labor.

Here’s our goal and what you can do NOW to help:

We hope to get 3,000 anti-child labor messages from youth like you posted on our "Kids Online March Against Child Labor" web site. Each message posted will symbolize a mile marched against child labor by an individual, class or youth group . If we reach our goal of getting 3,000 messages, at a mile a message, we will have succeeded in marching symbolically across the U.S.A. We want voices of youth and others to stretch from coast to coast and reach all the way to the child labor delegates in Geneva, Switzerland. Perhaps you could get people in your state or country to "march a mile online against child labor."

You can e-mail a message today. Send your message to endchlabor@AOL.com

You don’t have to write a lot, just raise your voice. Spread the word !

We received a message from Aerosmith : Aerosmith will rock Boston's Fleet Center on New Year’s Eve. Aerosmith wrote : "We would like to state our whole-hearted support and hope that tomorrow’s adults can use today’s technology to overturn the darker elements of their inherited past."

Please help by sending your message to endchlabor@AOL.com

The messages you send will be posted on the soon-to-open Global March web site: http://www.globalmarch.org and these messages will be delivered to the delegates before the June 1998 Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child, guaranteed. The Robert F. Kennedy Center guarantees it, and WE guarantee it .

Forced Child Labor is wrong and Geneva 1998 must be the beginning of the end of child labor. Won't you help by raising your voice online today ?

Sincerely,

The Student Campaign Leaders of
The Kids Campaign to Build A School for Iqbal
Broad Meadows Middle School
50 Calvin Road
Quincy, MA 02169
USA