New voice for voiceless

We have the rights to choose the path we want to embark on.

We have the rights to be the person we want to be.

Cause we are humans.

And that's called human right, right?

So, what is that that you are trying to do to me?

Just some thoughts of mine.

* * *

A very meaningful article :)

Filipino kid wins $130,000 peace prize

Thirteen-year-old Cris “Kesz” Valdez was once told he was the source of bad luck in the family. And for a while, he started to believe it too.

Beaten up by his father and neglected by his mother, the boy ran away from home and became a street urchin, scavenging through piles of garbage and spending his nights in an open tomb.

But now Valdez is the bringer of smiles to thousands of street kids like himself as the founder of “Championing Community Children,” an organization that gives flip-flops, toys and toothbrushes to deprived children in his hometown of Cavite City.

Out of three finalists, the boy was awarded on Wednesday the prestigious International Children’s Peace Prize at a ceremony in The Hague, where he received a 100,000 euro ($130,000) prize.

“My motto is, ‘we can change the world one heart at a time,’” Valdez said in an audiovisual presentation shown at the ceremony.

“My message to all children around the globe is: Our health is our wealth! Being healthy will enable you to play, to think clearly, to get up and go to school and love the people around you in so many ways.”

The prize is presented annually by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to “an exceptional child, whose courageous or otherwise remarkable acts and thoughts have made a difference in countering problems which affect children around the world.”

An initiative of the Dutch organization KidsRights, the Children’s Peace Prize was launched during the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureates’ Summit by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Asked about the prize money, KidsRights Foundation chair Marc Dullaert said a committee was now to decide, together with Valdez, to which projects it would be donated.

‘New voice for voiceless’

Valdez received the award from Nobel Peace Prize winner for 1984 Desmond Tutu, the South African human rights activist, who presented him with the “Nkosi,” a unique sculpture “which shows how a child can move the world.”

“You are wonderful,” Tutu told Valdez at a press conference shortly after the ceremony held in The Hague’s historic Knight’s Hall.

Tutu, the patron of KidsRights and the Children’s Peace Prize, said Kesz was a deserving and inspiring example of “a new voice for the voiceless.”

He is so good looking right? How was it possible for the father to treat him as a source of bad luck?