In 1995, a 12-year-old kid from Thornhill, Ontario had the audacious idea that children could change the world. Eighteen years later, Craig Kielburger, now 30, is the head of one of Canada's Top 100 charities and the leader of a youth movement one-million-strong including 15,000 students from across Saskatchewan who descended February 27 on Saskatoon's Credit Union Centre for a celebration of youth empowerment called We Day. Yorkton This Week staff writer Thom Barker was there to capture the sights and sounds of the star-studded, inspirational event.
Craig Kielburger is building an army of children to fight for children.
Last week, recruits to Kielburger's global cause of eradicating child poverty arrived in Saskatoon by the busload representing more than 300 schools from as far away as Creighton, a six-hour drive. They filled the Credit Union Centre (CUC) to the rafters, 15,000-strong, a sea of green in their We Day Saskatchewan t-shirts.
"You can't buy a ticket to We Day," Craig said. "You have to earn your way through at least one local action and one global action helping the community."
We Day and the associated We Act program, which kids commit to for at least one year to earn a ticket to We Day, are offshoots of Free the Children (FTC), the charity-now one of the Top 100 in Canada-that Craig started 18 years ago.
At its core, Free The Children operates on the philosophy that the best way to free children from exploitation is to provide education, alternative income, clean water and health care and the best way to do that is to free youth from the notion they are powerless to effect positive change in the world.
Craig Kielburger was first inspired to change the world when, in 1995, he saw a story in a Toronto newspaper about Iqbal Masih a Pakistani boy Craig's own age, had been brutally murdered for speaking out against child labour. Craig has said what he learned from the story was that the "bravest voice can live in the smallest body," so he gathered 11 of his classmates and formed a group called the Twelve Twelve-Year-Olds (now Free the Children) to carry on in Masih's footsteps.
Would it be a stretch to see irony in a movement that began as a crusade to free children from forced child labour using volunteer child labour?
Irony aside, it is a great strategy. Since the inception of the We Act program in 2008 participants have raised more than $20 million and volunteered 5.1 million hours for more than 500 local and global causes, as well as, collected 2.8 million pounds of food for local food banks.
According to its website, Free the Children has built more than 650 schools or schoolrooms in 45 countries providing education to 55,000 children every day. Through the charity's Adopt-a-Village programming, it has provided clean water, health care and sanitation to more than a million people and helped 30,000 women become economically self-sufficient.
We Day Saskatchewan
The We Day event itself is a star-studded, high-energy affair, which is part reward and part motivation for the thousands of volunteers who earn their way in.
Now 30 and basically a rock star himself, Craig still lights up like a kid when it comes to the people he has had the opportunity to meet through his charity.
"The amazing part of doing We Day is we get to invite our heroes to come, people who just knock our socks off with their incredible dedication," Craig said.
"That has literally ranged from the Dalai Lama to Archbishop Tutu and here, Martin Sheen. Martin Sheen is in the lifelong service campaign. In my books, he's an activist first and then an actor. The work that he's done from the civil rights days, literally getting arrested for the causes he cared about all the way up to the present where he spends more time on volunteering, working on ending hunger in America, working on giving workers a fair shake and looking at some of the global issues like nuclear weapons."
The We Day movement claims to have a profound impact including inspiring young attendees to believe they can make a difference in the world (97 per cent), allowing them to feel they are part of a broader community (96 per cent), and encouraging them to continue volunteering more than 150 hours per year (80 per cent).
The statistics, resulting from a survey by Mission Measurement, a U.S.-based consulting firm specializing in social impact studies, even suggests participation in We Day and We Act bumps participation in national elections. According to the survey, 79 per cent of American We Act voting age alumni reported voting in last year's U.S. presidential election.
Had I not been there at the CUC February 27, I would be naturally sceptical of those numbers, but the energy of the event made me feel like just maybe these youth can change the world.
Saskatchewan Minister of Education Russ Marchuk said he was amazed by the event.
"I was absolutely humbled to be in front of 15,000 absolutely energized, motivated incredible young people of this province," he said. "It was a real moving experience, quite frankly."
At the very least, Craig, along with his older brother Marc, knows how to put on a show for kids. It is fast-paced and entertaining. Nobody is on stage for more than 10 minutes and each serious, informational segment is punctuated by an entertainment segment.
In Saskatoon, the entertainment included performances by Lil JaXe, Karl Wolf, Hedley and Shawn Desman.
And, Craig and Marc themselves are masters at pumping up a crowd. Their high-energy, back-and-forth banter takes on an almost religious fervour as they pace and jump about on the stage.
Empowering Youth
Of course, Craig knows a thing or two about the power of youth. He was just 12 years old when he founded Free The Children. He was 13 when he made his first trip to south Asia. It was during that seven-week tour of the slums, sweatshops and back alleys he was able to force a meeting with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and convince him to press the issue of child labour with his Asian counterparts.
Craig admits it was tough going to get adults to take him seriously at first, but he pressed on publishing his first of 10 books, Free The Children-an international best-seller which has been translated into eight languages-at the age of 15.
"The whole reason we created this, created We Day is because 18 years ago we started as Twelve Twelve-Year-Olds and, candidly, we felt alone," he said. "We felt powerless so we wanted to create an even that when we have 15,000 kids from 330 schools, you know you're not alone."
Controversy
There have been hiccups along the way. In 1996, the now-defunct Saturday Night magazine ran an article in which the writer alleged the charity was not legally registered and donations were going to the Kielburger family.
Craig sued the magazine and received an out-of-course settlement of $319,000 the following year.
In 2011, Free the Children faced criticism on the website dawn.com in a blog titled
"Saving child labourers is big business" by Murtaza Haider, associate dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto.
"While Kielburgers' [sic] hard work and commitment is commendable, one is dismayed at the way Free the Children has been using a false story about the murder of a child labourer in Pakistan to further its cause over the past 16 years," Haider wrote.
The article also called into question the charity's finances saying, "The Kielburgers generated $23 million in donations in 2009 alone. According to the Globe and Mail, their not-for-profit real estate holdings in downtown Toronto exceed $11 million."
It suggested Craig and Marc were using donated funds to "build small real estate fortunes" and subsidize "extravagant lifestyles."
Again the organization fought back publishing a response by Tamara Kaftalovich, Free the Children's PR and publicity director, challenging the inaccuracy of the financial information presented. It prompted both the author and website to retract the statements.
As for the circumstances of Masih's death, Kaftalovich admits some aspects of the boy's story will always be murky, but the charity stands by its account based on Craig's extensive, first-person research on the subject.
The core of Haider's beef with the charity, however, was that Free the Children's efforts were actually hurting the people they are attempting to save by destroying the carpet industry in Pakistan thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
FTC's response did not address the author's opinion on that matter.
All in all, FTC has a good reputation. In 2012, MoneySense magazine gave the charity an overall "A" rating giving it top marks for efficiency with 90.7 per cent of its spending going to programs.
The organization also did well, with a score of 9.2 out of 10 or "B+", for governance and transparency. It lost marks, though, for a small reserve fund size of only two months in reserves.
"Ten years ago, glee clubs were not cool, saving the world was not cool. Now, glee clubs are cool and saving the world is cool."
"These kids stood up and spoke out and stepped up to help heal a broken world in a lot of deeply personal ways."
"This is the tip of the iceberg. We can't wait to see what these kids will do over the next 20 years."
Dave: "We Day is just a small step because all these students are going to back to their schools and get people motivated so it really is a chain reaction."
"This is the generation I have been waiting for my whole life."
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