Craig Kielburger
Founder, Ambassador for Free The Children (Volunteer)
Craig Kielburger 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.
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. Free The Children delivers innovative programming that educates, engages and empowers hundreds of thousands of youth in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Free The Children has a proven track record of success, having formed successful partnerships with top school boards and leading corporations - among the most notable, a joint project with Oprah's Angel Network called O Ambassadors. The program educated, engaged and inspired more than one million young people across North America to take action to help their underprivileged peers overseas.
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, an inspirational speakers bureau, and books which 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 is a syndicated columnist and New York Times bestselling author who has written eight 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, including the Board of Governors of Scouts 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.
Samantha Nutt
In 1995, twenty-five-year-old Samantha Nutt - a recent medical-school graduate and a field volunteer for UNICEF - touched down in Baidoa, Somalia, "the City of Death." What she saw there - gangs of young men roaming the streets armed with rocket launchers; a woman in a clinic line holding a dead baby; an overwhelmed, underfunded aid agency working in such an unsafe environment that its workers had to travel with armed escorts high on drugs - would spur her on to a lifetime of passionate advocacy for children and families in war-torn areas around the world.
Dr Samantha Nutt is a medical doctor and the Founder/Executive Director of War Child Canada. For fifteen years, she has been at the frontline of many of the world's major crises - from Iraq to Afghanistan, Somalia to the Congo and Sierra Leone to Darfur. These experiences have given her a unique insight into the brutality of modern conflict - why it begins, what sustains it and what we can and should do to prevent it.
As one of the most original and influential voices in the humanitarian arena, Samantha is a go-to authority for the many of North America's leading media outlets. With her uncompromising and powerful advocacy for justice and peace, Dr Nutt is one of the most sought after public speakers. She has inspired thousands of people across the continent to see global conflict as a problem that can and must be solved.
Samantha was recently named one of Canada's 25 most influential figures by The Globe and Mail, the latest in a long list of awards and tributes. Time Magazine named her one of Canada's Five Leading Activists, while the World Economic Forum recognized her as one of 200 young global leaders. In 2010, Samantha was awarded the Order of Ontario and in 2011, she was appointed to the Order of Canada.
Dr. Nutt is a staff physician at Women's College Hospital in Toronto and an Assistant Professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
The book Damned Nations is the brilliant distillation of Dr. Nutt's observations over the course of fifteen years, providing hands-on care in some of the world's most violent flashpoints, all the while building the world class non-profit, War Child, in North America. Combining original research with her personal story, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on war, as it is being waged around the world against millions of civilians - primarily women and children - and an exposé of how we facilitate and fuel these seemingly faraway atrocities. Nutt's boundless energy, dedication, and compassion shine through on every page as she lays out real, lasting solutions to these problems and shows how to move beyond outdated notions of charity towards a more progressive, inclusive, and respectful world view.
Eric Rajah
Eric Rajah is the compassionate co-founder and motivating force behind A Better World, an Alberta-based, volunteer-run aid organization. Thanks to Eric's thoughtful leadership the organization has delivered invaluable, life-changing support to people in need around the world.
The original goal of A Better World was to fund 10 projects at a cost of $5000 each. That goal expanded over the years to several million dollars in annual investments. As donations and project plans grew, Eric established a clear philosophy for A Better World. All funds raised would go directly to projects, with administrative help and expertise provided by Eric's business and volunteers. The focus would be on improving quality of life by providing education, health, food security, infrastructure and income-generating projects. No project would go ahead without the involvement of the community as a whole, and community members would play a hands-on role in building a better future for themselves and their families. A Better World would also work to stay with a community over a period of time, developing projects to meet a range of needs and bringing in various volunteers and experts to train workers in the community.
By 2011, the scope of A Better World had expanded to serve 15 countries including Afghanistan, Belize, Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, India, Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Tibet. Since 1990, countless individuals have seen their quality of life change dramatically thanks to community improvements funded by A Better World and a groundswell of volunteer support has resulted in thousands of individuals agreeing to pay their own travel costs in order to work with communities being served.
A Better World also makes investments closer to home. When Eric realized that Lacombe, Louisiana was one of the communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 he was moved to help the "sister town" and coordinated a five-year campaign to rebuild 29 homes in the community.
Eric and Candi make their home in Lacombe. They are active members of their church and community and proud parents to sons Brenden and Jaden. Eric continues to divide his time between his business and furthering the work of A Better World.
"When you give time and not just money, you're really investing your life in somebody else's life. That has been an important part of my faith... to give my time."
Eric Rajah