Craig Kielburger
Co-Founder of Free The Children
Thursday, July 19, 5 p.m.
Craig Kielburger co-founded Free The Children in 1995 at only 12 years of age. Today, he remains a passionate full-time volunteer for the organization, now an international charity and renowned educational partner that empowers youth to achieve their fullest potential as agents of change.
Free The Children delivers innovative programming to more than 3,500 youth groups and hundreds of thousands of young people in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. As the world’s largest network of children helping children through education, the organization has worked in 45 countries and built more than 650 schools and school rooms in developing regions, providing education to more than 55,000 children every day.
Craig is also the co-founder of Me to We. An innovative social enterprise, Me to We provides people with better choices for a better world, including socially conscious and environmentally friendly clothes and accessories, as well as life-changing international volunteer trips, leadership training programs and materials, a speakers bureau, and books which address issues of positive social change.
Craig is also a New York Times bestselling author, who has written seven books. His latest, released in June 2011, is the children’s book Lessons from a Street Kid.
Craig has a degree in peace and conflict studies from the University of Toronto and is the youngest-ever graduate of the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA program. He has received ten honorary doctorates and degrees, The Roosevelt Freedom Medal, The World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (often called the Children’s Nobel Prize) and is one of the youngest recipients of The Order of Canada. He serves on a number of boards and award committees. Craig’s work has been featured on multiple appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, 60 Minutes and The Today Show; and in People, Time and The Economist.