Craig Kielburger

📍Thornhill, Ontario, Canada

“Craig Kielburger was born in Toronto in December 1982 and grew up in Thornhill, a suburb north of the city, with his parents, both teachers, and his older brother, Marc. In April 1995, when he was twelve, he read a newspaper report about Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy of his own age who had campaigned against child labour and had been killed. Craig took the article to school, and eleven classmates agreed to help him do something about it. Together they founded Free The Children, holding their first meetings at the Kielburger family home in Thornhill. Later that year he travelled to South Asia to see child labour for himself, and he raised the issue with Canada's prime minister. The group grew into an international charity, later known as WE Charity, running youth programmes and school-building projects in many countries.”

Sources: Kielburger, C. Free the Children (1998), HarperCollins; Kielburger, C. & Kielburger, M. Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World (2004), Fireside; WE Charity archives