By Jesse Eaves Senior Policy Adviser for Child Protection, World Vision

Advocates are dynamic voices for change. Those voices often have a simple beginning. Two years ago, if 13-year-old Ravi was told that he would become a leading advocate against child labor in India, he would have taken that statement the same way that people treated him  - “as a joke.”

When his father fell ill when he was 8 years old, Ravi was forced to quit school and work to pay off his family’s never-ending debts.  For two years Ravi toiled in a small shack making wire brushes to clean machine parts in the city of Kanpur, India.

It was not the life he wanted to lead. However, Ravi’s life took a turn at age 10 when a social worker for World Vision found Ravi on the streets and got him out of forced labor and back into school. FULL POST