Craig Kielburger, Audacious at 12

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 4,000 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.

Every year, Craig and his brother Marc Kielburger organize We Day, Free The Children’s signature domestic event that reaches 90,000 students from 3,000 schools in person and more than 5.4 million through televised broadcasts. We Day has over two million followers on Facebook, making it one of the largest charitable causes in the world.

Free The Children has a proven track record of success, having formed successful partnerships with top school boards and leading corporations—including Oprah’s Angel Network, KPMG and Research In Motion.

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, life-changing international volunteer trips, leadership training programs and materials, a speakers’ bureau, and books that address issues of positive social change. In addition, half of Me to We’s net profit is donated to Free The Children, while the other half is reinvested to grow the enterprise and its social mission.

Craig has shared the stage, and his voice, with Nobel Peace laureates, heads of state, celebrities, rock bands, actors and pop icons, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Former President Bill Clinton, Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Richard Branson and many more.

With Marc, Craig writes “Global Voices,” a weekly column about the pressing issues of our time, syndicated in the Vancouver Sun, Halifax Chronicle Herald, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Winnipeg Free Press, The Huffington Post and Huffington Post Canada online. The Kielburgers also write a weekly advice column in the Globe & Mail called “Ask the Kielburgers.”

Craig is a New York Times bestselling author who has written nine books. His latest, released in April 2012, is Living Me to We: The Guide for Socially Conscious Canadians.

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. 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.