History
Free The Children was founded in 1995 by Craig Kielburger when he was 12 years old. Craig was reading through the Toronto Star newspaper before school one day when he came across an article about the murder of 12-year-old Pakistani factory worker Iqbal Masih who had spoken out against child labour.
Soon after, Kielburger established Free The Children with a group of his 12-year-old classmates. The organization was formed to expose child labour to North Americans and encourage other children to get involved in the issue. In an attempt to learn more about child labour, he then travelled to South Asia to meet child labourers and hear their stories first-hand. It was on that trip in 1995 that Kielburger captured the attention of the media (in Canada and, to a lesser extent, the United States) when he secured an impromptu meeting with then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien who was visiting Southeast Asia for a trade delegation. Kielburger attempted to persuade Chrétien to bring the subject of international child labour onto the Canadian Government's radar. After returning home to Canada, Kielburger and his friends at Free The Children began taking on fundraisers and petitions in order to help fight child labour. Along with his older brother Marc, Kielburger grew the organization into a registered charity.
In 1999, at the age of 16, Craig Kielburger authored Free the Children, a book detailing his journey to South Asia four years earlier and the founding of his charity. The book was re-released in 2007 with Me to We Books.
As said on their website, their goals are to "Free children from poverty and exploitation and free young people and children from the notion that they are powerless and to encourage them to make positive change in the world." Today, they have built more than 650 schools and school rooms in developing regions worldwide. Free The Children has established offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, London, England, and Palo Alto, California.
Read more about this topic: Free The Children
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