Asfaw Yemiru from Ethiopia spent over 60 years, since he was 14, devoting all of his time and energy to fighting for the rights of the most deprived children.

Asfaw believed that education was the only way to help poor children to improve their lives. He started his first school for children living on the streets in 1957 at the age of 14, after he himself had been living on the streets from the age of nine, working as a child labourer. Asfaw received The World's Children's Prize in 2001. He passed away in 2021, but his memory and legacy lives on.

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