that Free The Children had a lot of work to do.
In the early 1990s, the World Summit for Children and the Declaration on the Rights of the Child had promised to usher in a new era in the protection and promotion of children’s rights. Over the course of the decade, child labour made its way onto the international agenda, and the world became willing to address a number of issues that had for years been swept under the rug. By the time Free the Children was first published in 1998, our organization had become much larger than any of us would have imagined. Youth in Action Groups had begun to spring up all over the world. We had plunged into development work, building schools and establishing alternative income programs in a number of countries in the developing world. Young people were becoming more and more aware of their power, and were beginning to use it to help their peers around the world.
It was an exciting time filled with many important firsts, both for our organization and children everywhere. Free The Children India organized a rally to protest the kidnapping of handicapped children in West Bengal who were being forced to work as beggars and drug runners to Persian Gulf countries. As a result, the Indian government promised to put a stop to this practice. Fourteen-year-old Daniel Strand and the young people of Free The Children Brazil helped to convince the Brazilian government to invest more than one million dollars in projects to alleviate child labour in Salvador de Bahia. Of course, in other cases it was clear that promises to the world’s children were easier made than kept. We learned a lot during those years, and Free The Children continued to expand the scope of its activities. At the time, however, even we could not have imagined how our organization would evolve.
Over the past twelve years Free The Children has grown into the world’s largest network of children helping children through education. Whereas we used to work out of my parents’ garage, our Toronto office now occupies an entire building on the city’s east side. My older brother Marc—now a Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar and Oxford-educated lawyer—acts as a mentor to all of us at Free The Children in his role as chief executive officer. While we still depend on the efforts of our dedicated volunteers, we now work with a team of full-time staff who strive to empower young people everywhere to create positive social change.
Education, always at the centre of our work, has taken on new importance over the years. We are now committed to educating people about a variety of issues that impact children and youth, and to enable children around the world to benefit from primary education. Fundraising campaigns led by over a thousand Youth in Action groups have helped build more than 500 schools in developing nations, bringing education to more than 50,000 children every day. Our alternative income projects now empower more than 22,500 families. Our many accomplishments in the areas of education, alternative income, health care, water and sanitation provision and peacebuilding have earned us three Nobel Peace Prize nominations and facilitated successful partnerships with organizations such as Oprah’s Angel Network. To date, we have changed the lives of more than a million young people in forty-five countries around the world.
For all that our organization has grown, there are many things that haven’t changed—and never will. We remain as determined as ever to build a better world, and still live this commitment through projects planned one at a time.
As for me, I’ve managed to balance speaking engagements and fact-finding missions, while also completing an undergraduate degree through the University of Toronto’s Peace and Conflict Studies program. My travels continue, as I regularly visit our many projects in developing nations and check in with the Youth in Action groups throughout North America and beyond.
In some ways I think I experienced the luckiest childhood in the world. My supportive parents and great friends allowed me to gaze at the sky and see no limits. I’ve had the opportunity to travel to more than fifty countries and meet extraordinary world leaders like the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. I’ve been able to work with amazing social activists and explore fascinating cultures and traditions. Most importantly, I’ve have the chance to spend time with children living in some of the world’s furthest extremes of poverty, and draw inspiration from their hope for a better life.
Some, like Suzanne, struggle to survive the horrors of war. When I first met Suzanne in Sierra Leone, she quietly explained how, during her country’s decade-long civil war, she and her sister had been taken prisoner by a rebel commander and forced into a life of servitude. Liyane, who I came to know during a recent visit to Sri Lanka, is now struggling to care for her brothers and sisters after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami swept their parents out to sea. The Bedouin children I met in the Negev desert were trying to find a way to continue their schooling. Several of these children told me that many “important” people had come to visit them accompanied by the media, and promised to send them computers—which never arrived. They begged me to send them some pencils to use at school. I’m proud to say Free The Children has touched the lives of all these children, and I’m forever grateful for all that they have taught me in return.
Today, I am still driven by the commitment I made on my first trip to South Asia: to ensure that the plight of the world’s children will never be forgotten. Over time, I have come to understand that this commitment must involve not only raising awareness about the challenges facing young people and providing opportunities for children in the developing world, but also empowering a new generation of social activists. Excited at the prospect of helping the next twelve-year-old who reads a newspaper and is motivated to take action, we began to launch one idea after another: workshops, camps, manuals, speaking tours, volunteer trips abroad. This was the beginning of a youth leadership training organization, now known as Me to We, dedicated to empowering young people to create positive social change. Our name for the new organization grew out of the concept of bringing change in our daily choices by moving collectively towards living as a we generation. Having witnessed the efforts of young people across the globe to spearhead social change, we felt it was time to emphasize that we can all make a difference in our world right now.
Since 1999, Marc and I have been able to put a lot of our ideas about youth empowerment to the test. Through Me to We’s programming, ten of the twelve largest school boards in Canada are currently helping students fulfil their mandatory service requirements while making positive contributions to their communities. Our summer leadership training camps, learning resources and speaking tours continue to engage 350,000 kids across North America annually. Every year, more than a thousand young people embark on volunteer trips to our projects in places like rural China, Kenya, India, Mexico and Ecuador. They work to help local communities while enjoying the eye-opening experience of exposure to new cultures—just as I had my own life so dramatically changed on my first trip to Asia. Despite all-too-frequent charges of youth apathy, young people today do have the power to create positive social change—and they’re using it!
People sometimes ask us how we maintain our optimism amid so many challenges—injustice and deprivation, the scourge of AIDS and the devastation of war. We respond that it is often in the midst of these horrors that we find the greatest virtue. We have seen teachers spending their own money to help at-risk students in inner-city schools, aid workers toiling to the point of exhaustion to help people in refugee camps and mediators risking their lives in war zones in order to secure peace. In places plagued by hunger, suffering and despair, we have seen people coming together to help one another, sharing what little they have, and celebrating the small pleasures allowed to them. Witnessing such extraordinary acts of courage, we have come to appreciate the importance of community and caring, and to understand the true reaches of human potential.
Marc and I are frequently invited to speak at motivational seminars and conferences where people gather to discuss paths to happiness and fulfillment. All too often, we have found ourselves sitting on panels with people proposing quick and easy solutions to people’s problems. The more we’ve listened to them celebrate power and money, however, the more we’ve begun to see that their “solutions” conflict with much of what we’ve learned in our service work, both at home and overseas.
Through our travels, our diverse experiences with social involvement, and the opportunity to meet and learn from some our greatest heroes, Marc and I have discovered the most surprising thing: in setting out to change the lives of others, our own lives have changed. In learning about the different people and cultures that we