IYBC at the GYA 09 #5: Free The Children

The second keynote speaker that we had the privilege to hear at the Global Youth Assembly a few weeks back was the founder and current CEO of the internationally recognized Free The Children foundation. This young man of only 26 has helped literally hundreds of thousands kids all over the world, but focusing his work in sub-Saharan Africa and South Eastern Asia. When he was just twelve years old, he picked up a copy of the Toronto Star and read a horrific story about another twelve year boy in Pakistan, who escaped from an inhumane prison, became a human-rights activist, and then was shot down a few months later. This story moved Craig to such a degree, that he knew “something had to be done”. He himself claims his initial approach to be shamelessly idealistic.

I was shocked to hear that people in the current 2009 world were paying off their debts with their children’s lives. Craig emphasized that there are still functioning slave markets in the world! The concept of “absolute poverty” is defined as a single human being living on less than $1 USD a day. And unfortunately, there are over 113 000 000 children across the world who are in that ranking, not even being sufficient enough to be in just “regular poverty”. Harsh. But even though his speech had a lot to do with the impact of our Western society on the rest of the world’s economics and the such, he strongly stressed just how important it is to do something if you’re passionate about it.

After his session, people literally tromped over each other to get him to sign this amazing book, Me to We: Finding Meaning In A Material World, co-authored by Craig and his brother Marc. Somewhere in that chaos, Craig “recruited” me to “work” for him (pretty much I handed out his business cards to everyone who was killing each other for his autograph). He couldn’t stay too long because this man was literally boarding on a plane to Kenya an hour after he finished speaking to us. That’s dedication man. Nonetheless, I had my fleeting moment working for this amazing NGO, hahaha.

But at least Rachelle and I both got our photo taken with him! Such an amazingly chill individual, like even with the swarms of “fans” around him, he had the most down-to-earth demeanor, it truly was an honor to get to meet him, and pick up the hard-cover edition of his book. And looking at my blog, I’m sure I could get a lesson in how to live in a “Material World”. =