Today, on the 21st of June 2017 the WE movement came to Marsden Primary School. Once the bell had gone for the beginning of the day and all the classes had completed their register, all the pupils lined up eagerly, awaiting the assembly.
Once all of KS2 was inside the hall, they were introduced to Alex (a man who worked for WE). He told all of the pupils about how anybody could change the world, no matter how small or how big. To make sure everybody believed him, he told us a true story about an Indian boy.
He was born in a poor part of India, that was rural. The village in which he lived had no school, so when a group of men came to his village and promised the children an education, his parents jumped at the opportunity to give their child a better life.
Little did they know, that the men worked for a company that made carpets, they used the children to make them.
The boy worked eighteen hours a day every day, when he was just four years old. This continued until he was ten, when a human rights group set him free.
From then on, he wanted to let the world know how awful child labour is. He did speeches all over the world, including places like Boston in the United States of America.
As soon as his speeches became popular the sales of carpets began to drop. Until one of the companies got angry at him and shot him, while he cycling with his friends.
A boy who was reading the newspaper the day afterwards was so angry at the article about it, he tore it out of the newspaper and showed it to his class. He asked if anybody was willing to join him and prevent events like what happened to the Indian boy. Eleven hands went up, and the boy, the eleven children and his brother founded WE , in a classroom in 1995.
WE helps developing countries all over the world. That includes countries like, Kenya, rural China and Haiti. They help hundreds of villages get access to clean drinking water and good, nutritious food.
By Ben Hardie Y6
