On September 26th, Riverdale welcomed Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi to an assembly where he discussed his advocacy against child labor. Satyarthi, who was in New York to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Introduced by Maya Fernando (‘22), he is the founder of the Global March Against Child Labor, the single largest social movement against child labor that sparked international reforms in regulations, and the Global Campaign for education. As he entered the gymnasium, Satyarthi paced the length of the room while waving and exclaiming “I love you all my children!” When asked about his childhood, Satyarthi recounted “two sparks” that inspired his work against child labor. The first spark was the result of his first day of school, when he noticed a homeless boy sitting outside his school gate. “I started thinking,” he explained, “Why are some children born to work at the cost of their childhood?” Later, Satyarthi’s second “spark” came to him when he noticed how many of his classmates began to leave school when their parents could not afford textbooks and other fees. He realized that many used textbooks often go wasted so he began appealing to his local community for book donations. “If you put your shy away and be [a] little bit brave to go to the people with a good cause—with good intention, with honesty,'' Satyarthi claims, “then, the world is there.”

He claims his journey towards activism was clear, simply stating “I decided to follow my heart.” Nevertheless, his journey towards advocacy was long and difficult: “Emotionally it was tough, economically it was tough, socially it was tough,” Satyarthi explains, ” but I strongly feel that if you have the courage to listen and follow the call of your heart, then [your] mind will follow you. And if mind and heart start to follow you, then the whole world will follow you one day.”

Later in the assembly, Satyarthi was joined onstage by Payal Jangrid, who recently received the Change Maker Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates for her fight against child labor and child marriage in India. As the president of her village’s Children’s Parliament, Payal brought awareness to these issues and led her village to become “child friendly” in 2012. “We do not always need to accept something because it’s tradition,” she says, “so I raised my voice.”

During a Q & A discussion, when asked to elaborate upon intersectional activism Satyarthi responds, “Every human being has divine potential… but when we learn and grow in this world, slowly all these evils are confronted and then we consume and consume these things and they become the layers in our mind. Mistakes in our system drives us away from our core purpose in life: we lose track of compassion. Compassion is not empathy,” he explains, “Compassion is the feeling of suffering of other people—unknown people—as it is your own suffering.”

“The power of the child,” Satyarthi preaches, “is a million times more powerful than the power of the president.” This has been the inspiration for his newest campaign, 100 Million for 100 Million: “A hundred million young people in the world are victims of violence, slavery, trafficking, denial of education, refugee crisises, displacement, immigration and so on. On the other hand the world has 3 billion youth and hundreds of millions of them want to prove themselves.” 

“No problem in the world should be and could be seen and solved in isolation,” he exclaims. “Here I call upon each one of you in this school to be the champion for those sisters and brothers of you[rs]... there is a champion and a leader and a hero in each one of you. I am calling upon the hero inside you. I am just trying to tell you that you are the hero. You are the hero.”