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Om Prakash is born in the village of Dwarapur, in the Jaipur area, Rajastan, India He is 14 years old.

At the age of 5, he was taken away from his parents and became a forced labourer. For three years he faced many hardships as a child slave. He had to work all day long under bad conditions. Ploughing, sowing, harvesting, tending to cattle, handling pesticides and other chemicals was his daily routine, as were the beatings for slightest mistakes from his master. Om Prakash was given two meals a day for his work, he never got any wages.

At the age of 8 he was rescued and went to a re-integration center or “Ashram” for liberated child slaves. He was medically checked and went through counseling. Because he was keen on studying, he was enrolled in the nearby public primary school. He was reunited with his family, but lives in the Ashram. His family is too poor to take him in. He is in close contact with his parents and his 10 brothers and sisters and visits them every 6 months. All his brothers and sisters are in school. The parents do not allow them to work.

Since he lives in the Ashram he has started to help other children like him. Om Prakash is a very convincing boy with a great sensitivity for injustice He believes that education is a basic right for children and the key for a better life . He wants to make both parents and children aware of this. He started to tell the children in his home village about his own experiences as a child labourer .

In 2004 he was the head of the children’s assembly of his school. All students were asked to pay fees. Om Prakash had read that it was not allowed. To ask for money from parents who cannot afford this The education on Government schools is supposed to be free of costs. He raised his voice against this practice and approached the sub-divisional magistrate. A petition was filed in the Jaipur Court and consequently the court passed the judgement that all the money taken from the parents should be returned to them. This was done by the school. Then the Rajastan state Human Rights Commission took it up and ordered that no school could take money from the parents, with his case as an example. So the case of Om Prakash created a legal precedent which in turn had its effect in the whole state of Rajastan.

Om Prakash also played an instrumental role in making his home-village a “Bal Mitra Gram” ( a Child Friendly Village) and since then has worked to increase the number of these Child Friendly Villages. Child Friendly Villages are villages in which children’s rights are respected, and child labour is not allowed by the villagers. Another special achievement of Om Prakash is that he moblized more than 500 birth registrations on his own. He did so by visiting schools and villages and convincing people about the importance of birth registration: it gives the right to a name and nationality; it gives all the rights provided by the nation, the right to be free from all forms of exploitation, the right to education and the right to health care, economic privileges, like the opportunity to work, to open a bank account, social security and a pension. And also political privileges such as the right to vote. The Birth Certificate will have a long term impact for the children and will help them access social services: such as education and healthcare, proof of age! It will help to protect the child against child labour and child marriage: making it easier to defend against abuse and child trafficking. It is the first and most basic right of the child. Om Prakash has a strong spirit and will not easily stop once he has set his mind on something. An extraordinary example of his strong will is his bicycle tour to Delhi. From 4 until 8 september 2005 the Second Childeren’s World Congress on Child Labour and Education was held in Delhi. 40 children were selected to participate. Om Prakash was visiting his parents at that time, and was therefore not in the selected group. When he found out about it, he decided to go to the Congress by bike. This was not around the corner. He had to bike for 36 hours... He made an impressive statement at the congres about child labour and cycled back for another 36 hours.