The Free The Children initiative became a lifelong mission to effect positive change in the world. The idea eventually led to the WE Movement a movement of people coming together to change the world.
Craig Kielburger is also the co-founder of ME to WE, which has been described as a pioneering social enterprise. The profits from ME to WE help sustain the work of the partner charitable organizations. Because of his advocacy work, Craig has been featured in the media many times. For his philanthropic efforts, Craig has been recognized internationally. He is the recipient of 15 honorary degrees and doctorates. In , at 25, he was inducted into the Order of Canada. As a New York Times bestselling author and a nationally syndicated columnist, Craig has published 12 books.
An excerpt from the book WEconomy with Holly Branson. Chapter Eight: Differentiate Products, Page It brings an online edge to the in-store shopping experience, and fuses the transparency of technology with the selling power of purpose. The beauty of TYI is that it shows you what your purchase will do. The Kielburger home eventually became the world headquarters for Free the Children FTC , a nonprofit organization that works to abolish child labor practices worldwide.
Today, over , children in 27 countries — including Canada, the US, Mexico, India, Brazil, Ghana, and Pakistan — have been involved in FTC activities, and the organization receives thousands of letters each week from children who want to get involved.
Perspectives from Southeast Asia After his success with the Ontario Federation of Labour, Kielburger planned a trip to southeast Asia to visit the children working in labor camps and on the streets and bring their perspective back to the developed world.
Kielburger dipped into his savings and pooled money from his allowance and from doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to purchase his plane ticket. He enlisted Alam Rahman, a 25 year-old friend from Bangladesh, to go along as his chaperone, and he set up meetings with human rights groups in the countries he would be visiting.
Through their travels, they would meet with children from the labor camps, slums, and back alleys of Bangladesh, Thailand, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. One of those children was Muniannal, a girl whose age Kielburger estimates was around eight. Muniannal worked in a back alley in Madras, sorting through used syringes with lightning speed to separate the needles from the plastic.
Through an interpreter, Craig asked her where the needles came from. Again came the soft, Hindi reply as the girl squatted on the pile of syringes, apparently unconcerned about a stray needle pricking her bare feet.
Kielburger met with children who had grown up on a brick kiln in West Bengal, who had lung diseases from breathing in the dust from the carpets they wove in Varanasi sweat shops, who sold their bodies on streets in the Philippines under the watchful eyes of their adult pimps. But he still found a spirit of hope in them that in turn gave him the inspiration to take action on their behalf. Meeting these children is like a gift. She automatically took it and split it with her friend — no question about the matter.
This was the attitude we were dealing with, and we were frustrated. Kielburger asked the prime minister to meet with him and some child laborers but was turned down.
Two dozen journalists from high-profile Canadian newspapers and journals, and all of the major Canadian TV networks rearranged their schedules to attend. During the conference, one of the reporters asked Kielburger if he was meeting with the prime minister.
He was greeted by camera flashes and microphones thrust at him by the hands of eager reporters. His face continued to pop up on the covers of newspapers and magazines across Canada and the US, and he told the stories of the exploited children he met on Good Morning, America, CNN News, and other well-known television programs.
Searching for the comics in the local paper, a front-page article caught his attention. He read about a young boy his own age from Pakistan who was sold into bondage as a carpet weaver, escaped and was murdered for speaking out against child labor. Since , WE Charity has grown into the largest youth empowerment organization in the world, having impacted the lives of more than 1 million young people.
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