Craig Kielburger

Craig Kielburger "is the founder and chair of Free The Children, a unique international development and youth empowerment organization. Since its founding in 1995, Free The Children has become the world’s leading youth-driven charity, inspiring an entire generation to stand up and have their voices heard...

"Free The Children’s latest initiative is a joint project with Oprah's Angel Network called O Ambassadors. It is an unprecedented program, designed to educate and inspire more than one million young people across North America to become socially engaged and take action to help their underprivileged peers overseas.

"Craig is also the Co-founder and Director of Me to We Social Enterprises. The goal of Me to We is to encourage ethical living and social responsibility, while also helping Free The Children achieve financial sustainability. Me to We Social Enterprises includes international volunteer travel programs, a publishing house, a music label, leadership workshops, a speakers’ bureau and a clothing line. Last year alone, Me to We worked with more than half a million people and some of the best-known companies in the world to make social change as easy as buying an organic fair trade T-shirt.

"Craig has a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto and is the youngest-ever student in the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA program. He has received four honorary doctorates for his work in the field of education and human rights. Now 25 years old, he has traveled to more than 50 countries, visiting underprivileged children and helping with humanitarian projects and development initiatives.

"He is author of Free the Children and the co-author of national bestsellers Take Action! A Guide to Active Citizenship, Take More Action, and most recently, the New York Times Best Seller Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World. Together with his brother Marc Kielburger, Craig is a syndicated columnist carried by the Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun and Huffington Post, as well as for Canada’s most widely-read women’s magazine, Canadian Living.

"Craig has been awarded many national and international awards for his work, including The Roosevelt Freedom Medal, The World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (often called the Children’s Nobel Prize) and he is one of the youngest recipients of The Order of Canada. Craig’s work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, 60 Minutes and The Today Show, and in People, Time and The Economist."

Affiliations

 * Patron, Round Square
 * International Advisory Council, Counterpart International
 * Winner of the 1996 Reebok Human Rights Award
 * Sages Advisory Panel, Council for Global Education