Craig and Marc Kielburger2013-05-22T21:51:41-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=craig-and-marc-kielburgerCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Craig and Marc KielburgerGood old fashioned elbow grease.First Nations Youth Walk For Clean Watertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33148692013-05-22T17:43:16-04:002013-05-22T17:49:31-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
Acadia is just 10 years old, but already she is more aware of, and passionate about, water issues than most adults. "Water is life. If we don't have clean water, we don't have life," she says.
No less passionate are 26-year-old Ben Raven and the five other Manitoba youth, aged 13 to 18, who, faced with a water crisis of their own, believed they had no option but to undertake an epic journey of 2,100 kilometres from Winnipeg to the nation's capital to plead for action.
Raven, a member of the Jackhead First Nation, lives in Winnipeg. More than 300 other members of the Jackhead Nation inhabit reserves in Lake Winnipeg's watershed, a two-hour drive north of Winnipeg.
For decades, the world's tenth-largest freshwater lake has been deluged with run-off and sewage leaks resulting in the explosive growth of toxic blue-green algae. Parts of the lake's watershed have been diverted to feed mines and other industrial operations.
In February, an international environmental group awarded Lake Winnipeg the dubious honour of being the world's most threatened lake.
Raven says he is one of many who have lost family to illnesses resulting from water-borne bacteria.
The federal government announced $18-million in August, 2012, to support clean-up projects, however the initiative is still in its early stages and no projects have been announced yet, according to a spokeswoman from the Lake Winnipeg Foundation.
For Raven, enough was enough. In February, he led 50 youth on a 250-kilometre march from the Jackhead reserve to the steps of Manitoba's legislature. However he wanted their message to be heard by the country's leaders, too. So on March 28, Raven and five others set out on a six-week journey to Parliament Hill.
They chose to walk to bring awareness to the communities they passed. "You're not going to do that driving a vehicle. You've got to carry the message," Raven explains.
Acadia, a member of the Sagamok First Nation in Massey, Ont., near Sudbury, was waiting for the walkers as they approached. She pleaded with her parents to let her walk with them. Her parents suggested that they drive her and she get out and walk occasionally. But Acadia was adamant -- she wanted to walk the whole way. They relented and Acadia walked 600 kilometres on foot, her nervous parents driving alongside.
Along the way, other people from the communities they passed would join in and walk for short stretches.
Acadia said one of the most unfortunately memorable moments of the journey was passing a roadside stream clogged with garbage, the water a dirty, oozing orange. It reminded her of what they were walking for.
For weeks they had endured freezing temperatures, rain, hail, and even racist taunts and middle finger salutes. On Monday, May 13, they took the final steps up Parliament Hill. But standing before the Parliament Buildings they were welcomed with only silence. There were no crowds waiting, and of Canadian leaders only one Member of Parliament -- Niki Ashton, the NDP MP for Churchill -- turned out to hear their message.
A day later, Raven and Acadia took a break from breakfast to speak with one of our team. At an adjoining table, two other walkers -- a pair of teenage girls, one sporting a red Idle No More t-shirt -- sat hunched over their food, their heads bowed with exhaustion.
"Youth are the future, but we have no future without water," explains Raven, his slender six-foot frame dwarfing the petite Acadia, who sits beside him in a downtown Ottawa hotel restaurant.
Although their words fell on deaf ears in Ottawa, Raven and the other walkers will continue to raise awareness about clean water. Raven is going on to a youth conference in Toronto, where he intends to raise these issues. Acadia plans to use the travel diary she kept to educate her classmates and community.
We wonder, though, why they have to do this at all? Acadia should be spending these warm spring weekends swimming with friends, not convincing adults to clean up her water.
Children shouldn't have to stop being children to teach us a lesson about our responsibilities to the world.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.]]>Money Can Buy Happiness When You Invest in Givingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32765992013-05-15T12:31:15-04:002013-05-15T12:31:24-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
Elizabeth Dunn, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), has spent the past six years studying the link between wealth and happiness. She has discovered that money can buy you happiness -- if you spend it the right way. And one way you can get more bliss from your bucks is by spending it on others.
We recently chatted with Dunn about her new book, released this week, entitled, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (Simon and Schuster) co-authored with her friend and fellow researcher Michael Norton, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.
Dunn was fresh out of grad school in 2005 when she landed her first teaching and research position at UBC. Suddenly, the once impoverished student was earning a decent income.
"It felt like I was making tons of money so I thought, well, what do I do with it?" Dunn told us.
Figuring out how to get more satisfaction from her own money sparked Dunn's curiosity about the link between wealth and happiness, and whether people can increase their happiness by changing the way they spend their money.
Her first experiment involved simply handing people money. Randomly-selected students were approached on the UBC campus and asked about how happy they were feeling. Each student was then handed an envelope containing $5 or $20, and a note. Half the notes instructed the student to spend the money on her or himself, the other half directed the individual to buy a gift for someone or donate the cash to charity. Later that day, Dunn's team contacted each student again to ask how they had spent the money, and how happy they were feeling.
Dunn found those who had bought a gift for others or donated the money expressed greater feelings of happiness than those who had spent the money on themselves. And the dollar figure made little difference. The person who gave away $5 was still happier than the person who had spent $20 on themselves.
The next question that intrigued Dunn and her colleagues was whether joy from giving is learned, or hardwired in us. During a puppet show, two-year-olds were offered Teddy Graham cookies -- children in one group could eat the cookies, those in another group were asked to give them to one of the puppets. A group of volunteers watched videos of the children and ranked each child on how happy he or she seemed to be, based on reactions and facial expressions. They concluded that the children who gave away their snacks were happier.
Dunn also wanted to find out if it makes a difference when the gift is our own property, as opposed to something we simply found, so she set up two scenarios. In the first, one of the puppet show presenters "found" a cache of treats hidden on the stage, then asked the children to come up and give a treat to a puppet. In the second scenario, the children were given a snack for themselves and then asked to give it away.
According to Dunn, children were happier giving away their own treat than one they saw as a windfall. To translate that to adults -- you'll actually feel happier giving away $20 of your own money than giving away that $20 you found on the sidewalk.
Happy Money also explores other strategies to increase happiness by changing spending habits. For example, you'll get more joy from buying experiences than buying things -- a once-in-a-lifetime vacation or dining out at the most expensive restaurant in town will net you more happiness than a new flatscreen TV. Dunn said that investments in household time-savers -- she cited a robot vacuum cleaner as an example -- can buy happiness by increasing our sense of "time affluence."
Businesses can also reap rewards from investing in the happiness of employees. Dunn pointed to Google, which pays employees to spend 20 per cent of their time on personal pet projects at work. The result has been happier and more productive workers -- and the development of some of Google's most successful innovations, like Gmail.
Happiness is not something you'll hear much about from any financial advisor or financial literacy course. And yet the clear implication of Dunn's research is that the way we spend our money has a direct impact on our happiness and quality of life. Perhaps it's time to evaluate the "happiness return" on our investments.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>These Five Heroes Worship the Same Persontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32317822013-05-08T07:52:48-04:002013-05-08T08:41:16-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
We meet a lot of heroes every year. Not caped ones, generally, but down-to-earth heroes like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. James Orbinski, who save lives and change the world with education, medicine and compassion.
Still we wonder who these heroes look up to -- Martin Luther King, or Ghandi? Sometimes. But more often the answer is much closer to home: mom.
Grammy-winning Canadian singer Nelly Furtado is a mom herself with a nine-year-old daughter. And in a way she has become a mother to many others -- her generosity has empowered hundreds of girls in Kenya to go to school. She told us she grew up with strong female role models -- above all her mom.
"I'm proud to say I grew up in a feminist household. And I think the way you are brought up by the female role models in your life really makes a difference on how you make an impact in the world as an adult," she said.
She remembers her mother at church council meetings, fearlessly facing down a room full of men to make her opinions known. With her poise and intelligence, she earned their respect. Today Furtado strives to be as much of an inspiration to her own daughter as her mother was to her.
Aboriginal activist and medal-winning Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller also grew up under the influence of a strong mother. From the 1960s on, Kahn-Tineta Horn was an outspoken advocate for Aboriginal and civil rights who refused to accept the expected role of a quiet and obedient wife.
Horn-Miller told us her mother taught her and her three sisters that being part of a community includes an obligation to give back. She encouraged them to always stand up for what they believe in, and provided unflinching support to follow their dreams.
"She really paved the way for someone like me to do what I've done."
At first glance, Liz Murray's mother seems an unlikely source of inspiration. Murray was born into an impoverished household in the Bronx and both her parents were drug addicts. Murray's mother died of AIDS when Murray was 15 and her dad went to live in a homeless shelter, leaving Murray also homeless. She pledged to turn her life around, taking night school and studying on park benches. She completed high school, earned a scholarship to Harvard, and has become an internationally-recognized motivational speaker.
Murray considers her mom a hero. Despite addiction, blindness and mental illness, Murray said her mother loved her "deeply and dearly" and always struggled to try and keep things together enough to care for her family.
"I think for her it was about being bigger than her circumstances," she explained.
Peacemaker Archbishop Desmond Tutu laughed as he told us his mother lives on in the middle of his face-- he got his nose from her. More seriously, this man who has achieved a global reputation for caring and compassion still places his mom on a pedestal. "I wish I would be like her in her compassion and caring for others."
Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, still values the lessons he learned from his grandmother, especially on the importance of education.
Near the end of her life, she said to Atleo, "No fighter fights with their fists anymore, a fighter fights with education, grandson."
Atleo said she taught him to respect and care for everyone around him--even those he disagrees with or who speak negatively of him.
Dr. James Orbinski draws his inspiration from someone else's mom, half a world away. Orbinski is the only Canadian since Lester Pearson to hold the Nobel Peace Prize in his hands. As international president of Médecins Sans Frontières he accepted the prize on behalf of the organization in 1999 for its life-saving work around the globe. He himself has saved lives on the front lines of the civil war in Somalia in 1992-93, and during the Rwanda genocide.
Dr. Orbinski's hero is a mother he met in Malawi last year. When her child fell sick she carried him 15 kilometres to a clinic for treatment, then carried him 15 kilometres back again to their village.
"To me, that is heroic," Orbinski said.
This Sunday is Mother's Day. It's a good time to reflect that heroism comes in many forms, and the greatest hero many of us will ever know is the one in our own home who loves us unconditionally, supports us in all that we do, and teaches us the most important lessons we need to succeed in life.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.]]>Spencer West Has No Legs, But He's Walking for Watertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32238682013-05-06T16:12:57-04:002013-05-06T17:13:40-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
A congenital spinal disorder rendered his legs useless, so at age five, West underwent a double amputation to remove them. Doctors predicted that West would never walk and told his parents that he would never be a productive member of society. Even then, with all odds against him, West pushed limits and learned to walk on his hands.
His biggest challenge -- so far -- was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for charity last June. West summited Africa's tallest peak, climbing hand over hand to 19,341 feet, and raising more than half a million dollars for Free The Children's clean water projects in Kenya. That was last summer.
Today, we were with West as he kicked off the We Walk 4Water campaign, starting a 300-kilometre trek from Edmonton to Calgary. He and his buddies, David Johnston and Alex Meers -- all veterans of Kilimanjaro -- are walking in solidarity with the millions of women and children around the world who must walk for hours each day to collect water for their families.
This morning, West warmed up and took his first steps with students from Johnny Bright School, along with Degrassi's Munro Chambers and Aislinn Paul. En route, West will be joined by Grammy-Award winning artist Nelly Furtado; reality TV personality Ethan Zohn, and U.S. Army veteran and Dancing with the Stars winner J.R. Martinez. But perhaps most touching are two very special guests, Me to We Artisans Mama Leah and Mama Monica, who flew all the way from Kenya's Maasai Mara to take the first few steps with West. He's now leading the way with an entourage behind him.
West can use the support. He has been training for weeks to prepare for the walk, which might prove even more difficult than his Kilimanjaro climb. No one can predict how same repetitive movement for hours at a time will affect him and knows he must take care of his joints. His trainers have told him he must be careful to stretch.
Money raised will support Free The Children's year-long Water Initiative to provide 100,000 people around the world with a permanent source of clean water.
Already on his way in Edmonton, West will walk an average of 30 kilometres daily over the next 11 days -- on his hands and in his wheelchair -- all the way to Cowtown.
We like to say that West is a giant. He's brought new energy and a renewed perspective to Free The Children. There is a perception among some that it's really difficult to change the world. But West, who has faced many challenges, proves that if he can do it, anyone can. He's redefined possible.
As West begins his latest journey, watch for updates at Huffington Post Canada online in the days to come. Learn a bit more about West here:
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com. ]]>Star Power: How Hedley Became Honourary Maasai Warriorstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32005002013-05-02T12:22:07-04:002013-05-03T06:39:51-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Star Power: A six-pack of questions for celebs making a difference. Craig and Marc Kielburger, founders of Free The Children and Me to We, check in with some of their favourite actors, singers and activists to find out how they are changing the world.
When we first met the guys from Hedley, the band wanted to embark on a Me to We Trip to Kenya. Our perceptions about reckless rock stars were still intact, and we discussed extra travel insurance -- only half jokingly -- since they didn't exactly shatter the stereotype. Jacob Hoggard, Tommy Mac, Dave Rosin and Chris Crippin have an affinity for racy lyrics and backstage pranks.
When their tattooed limbs touched down in the rural Maasai Mara, we wondered how the community would react to the Canadian rockers. Turns out the local chiefs were fascinated by the band's markings, which resembled the traditional burn designs that proved strength in Maasai culture. Guitarist Rosin's stretched ear lobes matched those of the locals; they even had similar jewellery.
The guys have been honorary Maasai warriors ever since. And, as ambassadors for Free The Children, Hedley has played at We Day events across the country since 2009. Lead singer Hoggard fronts the group with eccentric stage antics, like his penchant for jumping around like an amateur acrobat. Offstage, Hoggard is thoughtful, passionate and informed.
We called up Hoggard recently while he was in Los Angeles, right before he went offline to hunker down for a music writing session (the band is currently working on their fifth studio album). He told us that his superpower would involved chocolate and why he believes that honeybees might be the bellwether for our environmental collapse.
What do you think is the biggest issue facing our world today?
It's called colony collapse disorder. These entire [worker bee] colonies are just completely disappearing [in parts of Europe and North America]--they're not even finding them dead, they're like completely gone.
There's certain tests that they do involving the effects of pesticides, but it hasn't been [definitively] proven scientifically that pesticides are the cause. But pesticides in the seeds become the pesticides that these bees take away. They are exposed on a regular basis and over time these colonies are disappearing. So it's clear it has to do with a non-organic, I guess you could say human intervention, but it's sort of this technicality that they're not able to prove that pesticides are a direct result.
It has potential to affect us on a pretty large scale in that honeybees pollinate like a third of the world's vegetation. I'm afraid that one day we're going to get to a point when people will say: "And then we killed all the honeybees," and it will be this massive change to the way we live and the way we eat.
If you could have a socially conscious superpower and change one thing about the world, what would it be?
I would transform people's frames of mind out of these internalized cults of self into these externalized, social aware, accountable sensibilities. You could create communities out of collectives of people that used to care only about themselves -- take New York, for example. New York is a really dense, enormous city, and you think "wow, what a crazy community."
Yes, within the city, there are microcosms and communities that thrive. But in a lot of ways it's a city that's not reaching its full potential. If every single person in New York was aware of everybody else, as well as the potential they would have as a group, the city's potential would be so much more. So I'd flip that switch for most people.
You mean like mind control? How does this superpower work?
[Laughs] no, not mind control. It would have to be like a...a chocolate bar. Or a super soaker full of socially aware chocolate.
You've got fans that look to you as a role model; who is your hero?
There's a guy named Chris Hedges and he has a website called Truthdig and he's written a few books. One of them is called Empire of Illusion. Basically, he talks about this concept that's been around since the Roman Empire, the idea of breads and circuses; the idea that empires are controlled by this element of distraction. In the Roman Empire it was gladiators and free bread. And today it's the same way, it's UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship] and cheap dining.
He can come across as a negative kind of guy, but what he's saying has a lot of truth, in that our societies do seem to tread along a similar path of destruction, and, socially, the degradation is visible in the way that we consume ourselves with consumption.
We work with so many young people. Looking back, what advice would you give your high-school self?
My poor high-school self -- poor guy. For me, high-school really didn't fit. I didn't belong. I didn't learn at the same pace as others and I didn't get along with many people. It wasn't my style. I would have reminded myself that life is long and the world is enormous and there is life beyond the walls of your high school.
For most students, your school is your universe. You wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it, whether it's socially or the classes you're taking. It's consuming and it's all you know. But as you grow up, you realize how dynamic and diverse the world is and you discover yourself as you discover where you align and fit in. As you realize there's more out there your potential becomes so much greater.
We believe in living me to we: making choices that positively impact the world, instead of just ourselves. Describe the moment you decided you wanted to give back.
For me it took place over a span of time. As an individual, and in lot of ways we all think this: you're under the misconception that as an individual you're not capable of that much action -- "I'm only one person, how much can I do?" I began to realize that even though I'm only one guy, people were watching me and listening to what I was saying. Whether I liked it or not, this was becoming much more prevalent in my life and I had the opportunity to impact the way other people think, whether it was through a song or a sentiment or an idea or through a speech or a trip to Kenya. I realized I can affect positive change.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com
]]>Karl Wolf Is a Bridge Between East and Westtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31876892013-05-01T08:02:47-04:002013-05-01T08:02:50-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
That was life amid the hell of Lebanon's civil war in the early 1980s. There is much Carl remembers from that time -- living in a bunker with his brother, hearing bombs fall outside, and the heroics of his father, who risked death to find food, and was shot in the back while carrying Carl and his brother to safety.
You might know Carl as Canadian hip-hop artist and songwriter Karl Wolf. His remake of the Toto hit "Africa" was one of the most downloaded songs from iTunes in 2009. Since 2001, Wolf has been nominated for multiple Juno and MuchMusic Video awards, and has taken home honours from the Canadian Radio Music Awards and Canadian Urban Music Awards. He has also been named one of the 100 most influential Arabs in the world by Arabian Business Magazine and he tells us he receives emails every day from Middle Eastern youth inspired by his success.
We find it interesting that, in an age marked by a gaping chasm of distrust between Western and Middle Eastern cultures -- especially in the years since 9/11 -- here is an artist who has achieved prominence and built a following among both North American and Arabic youth.
With one foot on each side of the divide, Wolf believes he is an ambassador for Arabic culture in North America. It raises the question: can a popular music influence the international cultural perceptions of a new generation, creating better understanding between East and West?
When Wolf was three his family fled Lebanon to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. When he was 15, his family moved to Montreal, where he is now based.
Wolf tells us he spent much of his youth trying to hide his ethnic roots. "I was really against being Arabic, I never really wanted to embrace that. Even in high school in Dubai I was always preparing to be a North American."
On his first day at college in Montreal, when the teacher read out Wolf's name -- his true family name, Abou Samah -- four girls in the front row whipped their heads around to look at him and erupted into giggles, saying Abou sounded like a monkey's name. That incident prompted him to adopt his stage name "Wolf" -- a nickname earned playing high school basketball.
But as he got older and built his music career, Wolf drew inspiration from his father, which caused him to reflect on his origins and the beauty of Lebanese culture. News reports about the Middle East after 9/11, however, portrayed Arabic peoples in a way that did not match his own experience -- the music and dance, and the "crazy" parties his parents would throw. "It was only when I started with my music that I realized I could start being an ambassador. I could be the guy to show that, hey, we are cool."
By incorporating Arabic beats and rhythms into his songs, Wolf says he is introducing North American youth to Arabic culture, turning the strange and foreign into the familiar and popular. His hit Yalla Habibi -- in English "Let's go, my love" -- was the first ever Arabic-titled song to make the Canada Top 40 in 2009-2010.
"It's a subtle thing. People don't even realize it's happening. I'm like a Trojan horse -- but in a good way," Wolf laughs.
Meanwhile his popularity and recognition are also growing in the Middle East. In addition to being named one of the world's most influential Arabs in 2010 alongside the likes of billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Ibrahim Dabdoub, CEO of the National Bank of Kuwait, Wolf was the opening act for the launch of MTV Arabia in 2007 and performed Yalla Asia -- the official song for the 2011 Asian Football Confederation soccer championships.
Centuries of mistrust between cultures won't be overcome with a song or two. However a new generation on both sides is listening to an artist whose music and personal history represents a fusion of two worlds.
Sometimes one experience in common is enough to start a conversation between strangers that can lead to understanding and friendship.
Karl Wolf will perform for thousands of young Canadians at the National We Day in Gatineau, April 29.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.]]>Change Maker: Victor Chan's Voyage Of Compassion With The Dalai Lamatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31552962013-04-25T12:48:36-04:002013-04-25T12:53:47-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Craig and Marc Kielburger, founders of Free The Children and Me to We, check in with some of their favourite actors, authors, singers and activists to find out how they are changing the world.
If there is one person in this world we truly envy, it's Victor Chan. For more than 40 years, Chan has had the incredible opportunity to accompany one of our heroes -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama -- on his world travels.
Chan has created a national treasure in Canada. The Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education he founded in Vancouver helps Canada's education system teach our children compassion and mindfulness. A close confidante of the Dalai Lama, he make the teachings of His Holiness more accessible to Canadians through his books -- such as The Wisdom of Compassion: Stories of Remarkable Encounters and Timeless Insights, published this past January -- and by bringing the Dalai Lama to Speak at We Day.
Chan's own story is only somewhat less amazing than that of the Dalai Lama himself. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan was a free spirit by nature. He chafed under Hong Kong's regimented education system that, he says, utterly failed to teach children creativity, emotional competence, or social responsibility. When he reached university age he left to attend schools in Canada and the United States. He still yearned for adventure.
In 1971, Chan took a break from his studies and bought a Volkswagen camper van in Holland with six friends. They rigged the vehicle to sleep seven and began a rambling year-long journey through Europe into Turkey and Iran, eventually ending up in Afghanistan.
One day while sipping tea with two female friends in Kabul, a pair of Afghan men sitting nearby invited them to a banquet the following evening. It was a trap and the trio was abducted. They were driven to a hideout deep in the mountains and repeatedly threatened with death. Then, while driving them to a new hideout, their captors lost control of the vehicle and crashed. Chan and his companions escaped in a dash down the mountain and hitchhiked back to Kabul.
Then free, the trio discussed what to do next. One of the women had a letter of introduction to the Dalai Lama at his home in exile in Dharmsala, India, and invited Chan to come along.
The meeting was not what he expected. At the time, Chan says he was quite the hippie -- long flowing hair, drooping moustache, and a "Zorro-like" cape. Throughout the entire meeting, Chan recalls, the Dalai Lama kept casting sidelong glances at him and giggling uncontrollably. "I think he had never seen a Chinese hippie before!"
Chan says he was discomforted by the reaction, but was quickly won over by this famous spiritual leader who was not pretentious or formal, but refreshingly open and spontaneous. As he spent more time with the Dalai Lama, Chan fell in love with Tibetan culture.
"They prize laughter and don't take themselves seriously -- it was a breath of fresh air from how I grew up in Chinese culture."
Since that encounter, Chan has travelled with the Dalai Lama across four continents. Those journeys, and many intimate conversations, resulted in two co-authored books: The Wisdom of Forgiveness in 2004, and now The Wisdom of Compassion.
Chan shares stories about the Dalai Lama's encounters with world leaders, children living in poverty, activists, and scientists, among others.
He recounts a visit he and the Dalai Lama paid to a neuroscience research facility in Madison, Wisconsin. One after another, masters in meditation were placed into an MRI machine and asked to meditate on the idea of compassion. Chan says it was incredible to watch the brain scans. In every mediator, the part of the brain associated with feelings of well-being "lit up." More fascinating, Chan says, was the amount of activity in the centers of the brain involved in movement. According to Chan, the research showed, "When people have this sense of powerful compassion, they also have a powerful desire to act."
In 2005, Chan founded the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education in Vancouver. He explains the centre exists to "educate the heart" -- providing resources and sharing scientific learning on how to incorporate the teaching of compassion and mindfulness into education.
The centre plays a key role in supporting the Vancouver School Board in becoming a leader in Canada for teaching compassion and social responsibility in the classroom. From May 9-11 the Dalai Lama Center will host a conference in Vancouver entitled "How Mindfulness Helps Children Thrive" that will bring together scientists, educators, health care professionals, and others to share information and ideas on how to teach compassion to children.
You can learn more about the work of the Dalai Lama Center at dalailamacenter.org, and find out more about Victor Chan and the books he has written with the Dalai Lama at victorchanbooks.org
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>Will Canada Lead in Fostering Social Entrepreneurship?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31414022013-04-23T17:00:00-04:002013-04-23T17:26:41-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
And the seared duck breast with carrot and coriander risotto is decidedly more scrumptious.
You see, the Clink Restaurant in Surrey is run by convicts -- or rather, staffed by the recently and currently incarcerated. It's the training centre for a social enterprise that provides inmates at High Down prison with training, certification, and links to full-time, post-release employment in the culinary and hospitality industries.
It was one of hundreds of social enterprises represented at the 2013 Skoll World Forum, where the growing movement of businesses making a profit and a difference was recently celebrated, and best practices were exchanged.
These so-called social entrepreneurs are unburdening governments and charities by tackling local and global issues from peace in the Middle East and clean water, to education and sustainable fisheries.
But not so much in Canada. Although the forum and the pioneering foundation behind it were started by Canadian Jeff Skoll, there were noticeably very few Canadian social entrepreneurs among the delegates two weeks ago.
That's because Canada trails the U.K. and other countries in taking full advantage of this burgeoning, win-win movement that merges smart business sense and the pursuit of a better world. The ideas and the people are ready to go, but our governments hold us back.
In 2005, the United Kingdom created the legal structure for Community Interest Companies (CICs) to use business models for social objectives. CICs can raise capital and are taxed like regular businesses, but their assets and surpluses must be dedicated to their social purpose instead of maximizing profit.
In the United States, nine states have similar legislation allowing Low-Profit Limited Liability Companies (L3Cs), but only two Canadian provinces -- British Columbia and Nova Scotia -- are developing regulatory process to support social enterprises, expected to come into effect this year.
The main advantage of the CIC and L3C is the public recognition that these businesses must operate for a social purpose. Consumers increasingly seek to make a difference outside traditional charitable giving, namely through their everyday consumer choices. Setting up clear regulations tells consumers which companies are providing products or services -- or investing a portion of their profits -- toward solving societal problems.
Some companies make such claims -- think "greenwashing" so common on alleged environmentally-friendly products -- without having to provide any proof that they are providing a benefit. But businesses legally required to provide a social benefit -- and clearly identified or branded as such -- help consumers make ethical spending choices to maximize the greater good.
But the potential is much greater. There are 7,000 CICs in the UK, and 700 L3Cs in the US. In addition to setting up a similar regulatory structure to those jurisdictions, the Canadian government could also give preferential treatment for social enterprises that are tackling social ills, such as preferred bidding for government contracts or easier access to start-up capital or loans.
Our personal story is a telling tale. When we decided to start Me to We, a social enterprise in support of our charitable work, we found the absence of any credible guidelines.
So we cobbled together a structure that would enshrine a social benefit into our founding principles, creating a system of governance, and giving consumers the certainty they need that the social enterprise's products go toward a social good. Half of Me to We's annual profits are donated to Free The Children and the other half are re-invested in the social enterprise to grow its mission.
Creating the structure for a social enterprise took the generosity of two of Canada's best law firms and a retired Supreme Court justice to help us -- one an Oxford University-trained lawyer, the other an MBA grad. But not every youngster with a good idea has such help. A simple process such as the UK model and those under consideration in B.C. and Nova Scotia would make it easier for aspiring social entrepreneurs to get their projects started.
Canada can quickly become a world leader in the emerging social economy by making it possible to do good and do well at the same time.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>ChangeMaker: An Aboriginal Using Sports to Heal Her Traumatic Pasttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31315092013-04-22T12:08:42-04:002013-04-22T12:08:14-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Star Power: A six-pack of questions for celebs making a difference.
Craig and Marc Kielburger, founders of Free The Children and Me to We, check in with some of their favourite actors, singers and activists to find out how they are changing the world.
It was the summer of 1990, and the Oka Crisis was drawing to a close. Quebec Mohawks were protesting plans by the community of Oka to build a golf course on traditional Mohawk burial grounds. The standoff escalated, drawing in the Quebec Provincial Police, and then the Canadian military. During one final, bloody clash, a Canadian soldier thrust his bayonet into the chest of Mohawk teenager named Waneek Horn-Miller, nearly killing her.
In the years that followed, Horn-Miller used sports to help overcome her trauma and anger. A star swimmer, she earned a place on Canada's national women's water polo team. She bore Canada's flag at the opening of the 1999 Pan-Am games and led her team into the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Horn recently agreed to go on a speaking tour with us to help non-aboriginal youth develop a better understanding of both the past and present for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Her words build bridges of understanding between cultures. "I need to get more people feeling the passion I do about my own people," she has told us.
We caught up with Horn-Miller in Montreal and talked about how she is following in her mother's footsteps, paving the way for future Aboriginal youth.
(Photo: Vito Amati)
On any given day we know that bullying, and poverty are significant problems. What's the biggest issue to you?
If there's one issue that's very close to my heart it's Stolen Sisters -- the murdered and missing women. In my own community, talking to a lot of other Indigenous women, it's sad to say but I don't know many that haven't been affected or been victims of some sort of sexual violence. In my eyes they are someone's sister, someone's auntie, someone's grandmother. I believe that they're my cousins. And really, it infuriates me that more is not being done.
There are many people who look up to you as a role model, but who is your hero?
My heroes are my family -- my mother and my sisters. My mother was a native rights activist back in the sixties. She did what was not expected of her. She was born in 1940, so she was expected to be married and have babies by 1958. She didn't want that, she wanted to make change and she got into the native rights movement and the civil rights movement, and she really paved the way for someone like me to do what I've done.
If you could have a socially conscious superpower and change one thing about the world, what would it be?
I think it would be that death under circumstances is unacceptable. Murder is murder, whether you shoot a rocket-propelled grenade or you refuse health services to somebody, or treat them with disrespect in the hospital. I think that we need to start looking at the death of children and people around the world as an unacceptable casualty of war.
We believe in living me to we: making choices that positively impact the world, instead of just ourselves. Describe the moment you decided you wanted to give back.
There wasn't a moment when I decided I wanted to give back. I was just raised by a mother who said that's your job. You are part of a community. You don't just say you're an Indigenous person and then you're a member of that community. It's not a cash card where you just take, take, take from it. You have to give back. The biggest part of being a community is contribution. I believe that coming home post-Olympics I really felt that my purpose was to make a change and to show Canada that we will never reach our full potential until our Indigenous people reach their full potential.
We work with so many young people. Looking back, what advice would you give your high school self?
I was so serious when I was a teenager. It was post-Oka, I was 15, 16, and there was so much trauma happening in my community, in my own life, and I had just lost that sense of happiness and fun that a teenager should have. It felt like I was carrying the burden of the world. I think I would tell her: 'You know what, put that burden aside and just try to just enjoy being a teenager, because you're never a teenager again. You can always get older, but you can never get younger'.
What was the greatest lesson you learned from a parent or mentor?
The greatest lesson that I ever learned was: anything is possible. As an Indigenous person, if I had a dream to be an Olympian it was possible. But it wasn't going to be easy. I needed to understand that there were huge obstacles in my way, whether it was racism or whatever, and those can always stop you in your tracks. But that's part of it, and you have to figure out a way around it and don't ever let anything stop you. My mother used to say: you'll be the first and people will come behind you and they'll remember, oh, Waneek Horn-Miller made it easier for them--a little bit easier for them to follow in my footsteps.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com. ]]>Green Your Celebrations This Earth Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31156882013-04-19T12:49:21-04:002013-04-19T12:16:14-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
When Marc was 13, an attempt to make home-brewed, eco-friendly cleaners wasn't just a science project, it was also a solution to a problem that existed 20 years ago. Back then, it was tough to find sustainable, environmentally-friendly products. That was before the green revolution. Now, the challenge isn't finding green products, it's detecting greenwashing (companies misleading consumers with green PR but shoddy goods); deciphering organic or fair trade labels; and looking for maximum impact in a saturated market. Heightened consumer interest has lured big companies to buy up small, sustainable start-ups, making it harder to trace ingredient and manufacturing origins.
But consumer interest has also spurred green-friendly trade shows. Everything from hybrid cars, to botanical-based cosmetics, to information about Canada's oceans, can now be found in one convenient location. In preparation for Earth Day on April 22, and with a nod to the Green Living Show held this past weekend in Toronto, we've compiled some of the show's featured products and services, as well as some hand-picked shops and tips from our book, Living Me to We: The Guide for Socially Conscious Canadians, to help make it easier to be green.
Celebrate Sustainably
Spring is coming. We hope. And with it comes wedding and barbeque season. It can be tough to plan a big event and still leave a small carbon footprint. Why not seek help from an event planner with a roster of farm-to-table caterers and venues with garden-topped roofs on file, like Toronto-based Common Sense Events or Vancouver's Refresh Events.
Party tip: If it's a causal or family affair, have everyone B.Y.O cutlery. Or, make your wedding favour a personalized mason jar-turned-drinking glass. Make your own or add decals from an online store. Save money on rentals and cut down on the caterer's industrial dishwashing; guests will use only one glass instead of getting a new one with each beverage. If you can't stand the cleanup, check out these biodegradable plates.
Clean greener
This one takes us back to Marc's science project: a company in York region employs people to make natural cleaning products from their homes. Buncha Farmers Inc. swears by their natural stain removers and honey-based soaps.
Scrubbing up tip: Don't underestimate the power of baking soda. Dig it out of the back of your fridge and add a half-cup to your bath as a natural cleanser and moisturizer -- a two-in-one. Add vinegar to clean the tub afterward.
Shop Vintage
One person's trash fills another person's boutique furniture shop. Or "Thrift shop" -- think rapper and producer duo Macklemore and Lewis. Vancouver's Deluxe Junk is the city's oldest vintage shop, with a mix of consignment and recycled items. If you're looking to decorate your wardrobe, visit Montreal's Ethik Boutique .
Decor tip: Upcycling is the latest in green hybrid words. Take a used item -- from Goodwill or even around your own home -- and reduce waste by increasing its use and value. Turn an old television into a planter or make a patchwork pillow out of old denim or prints: you'd never be caught dead wearing it again, but your couch might.
Observe Earth Day: It's an unofficial Earth Day tradition to plant trees. But that's not realistic for everyone. If your green thumb is broken, or you're an apartment dweller without a backyard, why not donate a few household items or do some spring cleaning with homemade products.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com
]]>"What's Wrong With Kids Today?" Is the Wrong Questiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30953192013-04-17T12:41:23-04:002013-04-17T12:25:24-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
Last September, a British Columbia teen posts a heart-rending video detailing the constant cyber-bullying she had endured for more than a year. One month later she commits suicide.
In Ottawa, three teenage girls stand trial for human trafficking and running a prostitution ring. South of the border, in Steubenville, Ohio, two high school football players are headed to prison for rape, and two girls face charges for threatening the victim. In Fort Colville, Washington, a pair of boys just 10 and 11 years old are charged with plotting to rape and murder seven classmates.
Cue the cliché question: "What is wrong with kids today?" Perhaps the problem is what we are teaching them or, more accurately, what we are not teaching: compassion.
Templeton Secondary is a high school in Vancouver's downtown east side -- sometimes referred to as "Canada's poorest postal code." Many of Templeton's students are at risk of falling, or have already fallen, into criminal youth gangs. However, Vice-Principal Rick Mesich says Templeton is successfully steering students away from gangs and criminal activities by weaving compassion and social responsibility right into the fabric of academic courses.
In teacher Margo Murphy's culinary arts class, students must spend three days preparing and serving gourmet lunches and dinners for the local homeless population. The students learn how to cater for large groups, while simultaneously learning how they can have a positive impact on the lives of others. In Gerry Kuniss's social studies class, students are graded on a "Pay it Forward Project," such as assembling and distributing food baskets to families in need, that must have a positive impact on others.
At drama teacher Jim Crescenzo's Boys Club, at-risk students meet weekly to talk about how to build character traits like integrity and compassion. Crescenzo brings in guest speakers, including successful businessmen and former gang members.
A young man named Dzinh (whose last name was withheld by Templeton) was an active gang member when Crescenzo convinced him to join the club in 2007. Dzinh agreed, thinking membership in the club would divert suspicion while he got in to trouble with his gang outside of school. But Crescenzo had other ideas. He helped Dinzh become a mentor for younger students and, when he fell into a dangerous conflict with a rival gang member, Crescenzo had one of his guest speakers -- a prominent Vancouver businessman -- take the boy under his wing. When he graduated in 2010, Dzinh had quit his gang and is now on a scholarship studying business at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
In 2006, in anticipation of a visit from the Dalai Lama, teachers across the Vancouver School Board (VSB) developed lesson plans for exploring compassion. Today the VSB has set a Board-wide five-year plan for social responsibility. Compassion is being integrated into the elementary and secondary curriculum -- English, drama, even science.
Other organizations like Roots of Empathy, The Kindness Foundation, and The Hawn Foundation are also developing publicly available resources and lesson plans to teach compassion in a school setting.
"Mindfulness is something that should be applied across the whole spectrum of learning. It is arguably more important than the mere accumulation of information," says Victor Chan, founder of the Dalai Lama Centre, and co-author with the Dalai Lama of a new book The Wisdom of Compassion (Riverhead).
The Vancouver-based Dalai Lama Centeris working with the VSB to support the development of curriculum resources.In May, the Centre will host a conference in Vancouver entitled "Heart-Mind 2013: Helping Children Thrive" -- bringing together experts and presenting science-based evidence that teaching compassion can help children thrive emotionally, physically and academically.
Every Vancouver teacher and principal we spoke to told us the same thing: the culture they see in their schools today is vastly more positive than what they remember from their own days as students.
Numerous scientific studies over the past few decades have found a direct correlation -- the greater a person's capacity for compassion and empathy the less likely they are to commit acts of aggression or anti-social behaviour.
At Templeton, exposure to a culture of compassion in school led a young man to reject a life of gang violence. Just like the ability to factor an equation or write a good essay, compassion can be taught in the classroom through example and practice.
When we read about horrific acts of bullying, it is not enough to utter the mantra "What is wrong with kids today" and flip to the next page of the newspaper. We are not powerless to prevent these tragedies -- the solution starts with educating our children in a culture of compassion.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>Behind The Headlines: How Kid President Can Change the Worldtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30611922013-04-11T12:57:53-04:002013-04-11T12:18:12-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Behind the Headlines: The social causes in current events. In a unique take on daily news hits, Free The Children founders Craig and Marc Kielburger go behind the headlines to explore how the stories you read are connected to the causes you care about. You'll never read the news in the same way again.
He's pro dance party. Sometimes he naps at his desk. His memos come in the form of paper airplanes and his office is made of cardboard. You could call him a fiscal conservative, but be probably wouldn't know what that is. He's Kid President Robby Novak, and he took office in 2012, at age nine.
When we met Robby a few weeks ago, he was preparing for his visit to the White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll. The Grade 3 student from Henderson, Tennessee, and self-appointed leader of nine year olds everywhere was excited to meet President Barack Obama, but unsure about claiming the Oval Office one day. He said the U.S. presidency might involve "too much paper work."
Robby is usually up for anything--like the "Harlem Shake" with hip-hop icon M.C. Hammer at We Day Seattle.
Robby read to Obama from his cue-card, "How can kids and grown-ups work together to change the world?"
Obama said, "The most important thing we can all do is to treat each other with kindness and respect."
He said kids should stand up for bully victims and treat everyone fairly, and, "If you start learning to do that as kids [...] when they grow up they'll be doing the same thing and we'll have a lot fewer problems."
That's great advice. Surely we should all be nice to one another. But it was very much a politicians' response: it answered the question without answering it.
More importantly, it was predicated on the idea that kids must grow up into compassionate adults in order to contribute to society -- no mention of kids working with adults while they're still young.
Kids have boundless energy and big ideas, unhindered by prejudice and unconcerned with adult notions of "impossibility." Adults have resources, specialized skills, and life experience. They're ideal partners, especially in fields where risk-to-benefit ratios would benefit from an equal measure of lofty what-ifs and practical thinking, like medical research or social entrepreneurship.
Obama could have said that every non-profit board of directors should have a youth delegation to attend meetings and share ideas to inform and influence crucial votes. He might have spoken about mentorship opportunities or specialized government research grants for kids under the age of 18. Really.
We could all learn a thing or two from Kid President, and other incredible kids who haven't waited to grow up to change the world. Here are just a few outstanding youth making great strides in diverse sectors.
Medical research
California teen Angela Zhang developed a promising potential cure for cancer -- in her spare time. Outside of her regular high school workload, Zhang created a nanoparticle that attached to a cancer medicine, which in turn attached to tumours. When infrared light dissolves the nanopaticle, the medicine attacks only the cancer cells. In tests, tumours in lab rats almost completely disappeared. Zhang started her research as a freshman and earned a $100,000 scholarship in her senior year, at age 17 .
International Development
Ryan Hreljac, of Kemptville, Ontario, first learned that people were dying for lack of clean water in Grade One. He started raising money to combat the global water crisis and built his first well at a primary school in northern Uganda in 1999 -- at age seven. Ryan's Well Foundation has since constructed more than 740 clean water projects worldwide. Hreljac is now studying international development and political science at the University of King's College in Halifax.
Green engineering
In Malawi, William Kamkwamba built a windmill from spare parts when he was just 14. His only training came from a library book called Using Electricity. The book wasn't even about engineering; Kamkwamba figured that part out on his own. His windmill powered the family home and a simple irrigation system for their crops. Kamkwamba has since spoken around the world, authored a memoir, and built a solar powered water pump for his village's first drinking water system.
Personal finance
For India's street kids, it's tough to accumulate savings. Children might mismanage or lose their funds. Shopkeepers or corrupt police officers might steal from them. The Children's Development Khazana (CDK) is a loan cooperative developed by the Butterflies program for street kids, designed to teach children about finance and empower them to leave the streets. Here's the best part: the banks give loans to and are managed by children under the age of 18. Young recruits are trained in accounting; they take deposits and keep legers in branches throughout South Asia.
The CDK is a just one of many brilliant examples of adults and children working closely together to change the world.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>Canada Was Wrong To Withdraw From Desertificationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30466292013-04-09T17:00:00-04:002013-04-10T05:55:39-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/
"I would stare at our harvest. I was so happy, so confident in my children's future," she said, before her smile faded. "That feels like another world now."
Today her mud hut in Pimbiniet, Kenya, is full of nothing but choking smoke from the cook fire. On the day our team visited, Busienei's three-year-old daughter, Chelangat, sat on her lap, playfully swinging her legs. Each kick sent up a cloud of dry dirt. Busienei's once lush farm fields have been dry and dead for five years. The pot bubbling on the fire contains only tea -- it's all Busienei has left to feed her children.
This is what the consequences of desertification looks like, up close.
On Monday, March 25, Canada quietly served notice to the United Nations that it is quitting the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Our country walked away from the 190-nation group working to identify the causes of desertification and develop solutions.
Many voices have since weighed in citing facts and figures, and the potential impact on Canada's international reputation. However the voices absent from the debate are those of the estimated two billion people like Busienei watching their livelihoods dry up with the land.
Last month, a massive dust storm wailed out of the Gobi Desert leaving people gasping in Beijing and even across the ocean in Los Angeles. The Sahara Desert is swelling southwards by as much as 48 kilometres every year.
The UN estimates that a quarter of all the Earth's land is threatened with desertification -- when arid regions degrade into desert. Desertification is the result of droughts caused by climate change, and human activities like deforestation and overgrazing of livestock that expose the soil to erosion. Half the world's poor live in arid regions at risk of desertification, according to a 2005 UN report.
Busienei and her husband were the proud owners of an acre of fertile land, bringing in a yearly harvest sufficient to feed the couple and their nine children, and generating enough income to send their older children to school.
In 2008 drought struck and the family experienced their first crop failure. Busienei's husband left to find work and they haven't heard from him since. Last year, Busienei sold the family goat for seeds in a desperate, last ditch gamble that the rains would return and give her a harvest. The bet did not pay off. Buseinei can only afford to send her daughter Chebet to school. But Chebet has spent so much time simply helping the family search for food that she has fallen a year behind her classmates.
Already two of Busienei's nine children have died from illnesses. Her 18-year-old son, Wesley, suffers seizures. He fell into the fire during a seizure two years ago and was badly burned. Busienei sold most of her land to pay for his treatment but is still in debt to the hospital.
On most days the only food Busienei gives her children is a cup of tea with a dollop of goat's milk that she buys from others. To afford this, she illegally cuts down trees to make and sell charcoal. This gradual deforestation increases the speed of desertification in the area, but there is little else she can do.
"Without good soil and reliable rainfall, what good is the land? I have always trusted my farm to provide for me. Now without my farm, who do I look to?" she said, looking out over a dustbowl that was once rich farmland.
While there is little that can be done to restore land that has degraded completely into desert, it is possible to prevent the spread of desert conditions and help communities adapt. The Government of Turkmenistan launched a massive nation-wide initiative to plant 755,000 trees to stop the spread of its deserts. Farmers like Busienei can learn improved agricultural techniques and plant hardier crop varieties.
The Government of Canada justified its departure from the Convention to Combat Desertification by saying the UN body is a "talkfest" -- and arguing only 18 per cent of Canada's $300,000 annual contribution is used for actual programs to fight desertification and assist affected communities. There may well be some validity to that concern. The UN's second scientific conference on desertification -- being held this week in Bonn, Germany -- looks like it will produce little more than discussion documents.
But walking away accomplishes nothing either. The UN Convention was created because desertification is a global problem exacting a dire toll on billions of people like Busienei. As one of the world's wealthiest nations, Canada needs to be part of the solution.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com.
]]>Miss the "Mad Men" Premier? La La La I Can't Hear Youtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30373802013-04-08T12:57:13-04:002013-04-08T12:08:13-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Mad Men premiere is that you do not talk about the Mad Men premiere.
We'll say only this: the sixth season started off with a pensive Don Draper, more withdrawn than usual on a Hawaiian vacation with wife, Megan. It ended with the revelation that the honeymoon is over.
This morning, we saw one colleague with an index finger in each ear, his eyes shut tightly, to avoid overhearing plot details in office conversations. We're also fans of the show. Still, sensory deprivation is hardly a proportionate response to potential spoiler alerts. May we suggest some alternate entertainment to help put things into perspective?
Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in 11 cities across North America this year, inspiring more than 160,000 attendees from over 4,000 schools. For more information, visit www.weday.com
]]>Star Power: What This 29-Year-Old Army Vet Would Do to Stop Violencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30144382013-04-04T12:10:43-04:002013-04-04T12:44:06-04:00Craig and Marc Kielburgerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-and-marc-kielburger/Star Power: A six-pack of questions for celebs making a difference.
Craig and Marc Kielburger, founders of Free The Children and Me to We, check in with some of their favourite actors, singers and activists to find out how they are changing the world.
U.S. Army infantryman J.R. Martinez was only 19 when he was deployed to Iraq, in 2003. Less than a month into his tour of duty with the elite 101st Airborne, his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. The vehicle was thrown into the air, ejecting three other soldiers. Martinez, trapped inside, was engulfed in flames. The skin on his face, arms and hands burned away.
It was more than a moment that changed everything, Martinez told us. It was the nearly three years he spent in recovery -- undergoing more than 30 surgeries -- that tested his attitude, changed his definition of service and set the course for the rest of his life. His story just gets more and more incredible.
As a motivational speaker, Martinez has shared his story with other burn patients, army vets, corporate groups and, last week, 15,000 young volunteers at We Day Seattle.
There, the 29-year-old army vet told us about his own hero, and why, if he had a superpower, he'd end violence and war around the world.
(Photo - Dana Nalbandian - Getty Images)
We're all about living me to we: making choices that positively impact the world, instead of just ourselves. Describe the moment you decided you wanted to give back.
It was about six months after I was injured, going through the day-to-day therapy and doctors, when I was asked to visit another patient who was having a hard time. And I realized I had a positive effect on that patient. At that moment I realized I could serve. Coming from the military, it's all about service. I thought I could serve in a completely different capacity -- I'm not going to be able to be in the military anymore -- now it's sharing my story.
Helping somebody can just mean sharing and talking and listening. Listening is such an important thing, especially in our world where technology has taken over and we have a tendency at times to be unconnected to people. I just sat down with that guy and said, 'I'm 19, this is what happened to me, this is what I experienced. It did get better, and it will get better for you.' That was it. It was no big secret.
You've got fans that look to you as a role model; who is your hero?
It's not necessarily a superstar to the rest of the world, but she's a superstar to me. My mom has been through a lot in her life. As a young boy being raised by a single mother, her strength was just amazing to me. I have seen her adapt and overcome and find ways to smile and stay strong. Those things have been really inspiring to me.
On any given day, we know that girls' education, world hunger and global warming are some of the social issues facing our world. What's the biggest issue to you?
I think all of those initiatives are very important in their own way. My family is from Central America, El Salvador. And I remember going over there for the first time when I was six, and my cousins, my grandma, not having clean water at times. I know what it's like not to live in the United States.
But it's hard to say what's most important to me. Giving girls the opportunity to realize that they can do as much as any other man, empowering kids to realize they can make a difference even from very young. It's almost like an investment. I invest in kids. Me being 29, if I'm helping a 10-year-old kid, when I'm old and grey, these kids are going to be in charge -- not only of this country, but also of this world.
If you could have a socially conscious superpower and change one thing about the world, what would it be?
I would try to end violence. That is one thing that upsets me, whether it's violence from country to country or community to community or state to state. That is something that depresses me, especially because a lot of it can be avoided. I don't think we need to go to those places.
Nobody wins from any kind of violence or any kind of war. People constantly lose, whether it's the people fighting or the people that love them. If I had a superpower, when people were getting ready to duke it out I'd sprinkle some dust and they'd be like, 'Alright, we're okay.'
People have a tendency to think that vets and military personnel, we love to fight--that's not necessarily the case.
If people from the future were talking about you, what would you want them to say?
I want people to know that the journey that I've been on was unpredicted -- not planned. I just believed in myself. I realized that everything I'd been through prior to that moment had prepared me for that moment. I found ways to beat all the obstacles and all the adversity. And that I was a part of change. And that I cared. It wasn't just a job to me; it was something I loved to do.
I think about that now, having an 11-month old daughter, I think about one day -- her being proud of what her father does.
We work with so many young people. Looking back, what advice would you give your high-school self?
So many things! I would sit myself down and give myself a full-on, 45-minute motivational speech. But knowing my high-school self I don't know how much I would listen.
All jokes aside, the biggest thing I'd tell myself is the importance of academics, of constantly learning in school. Kids in school think, 'I'm never going to use this' because they think they know everything -- and I thought I did too. I would tell myself: study, work hard, and get good grades. Because all I thought about was sports. I would have given myself more options when I graduated, versus just joining the military, which wasn't a bad option. But I could have had more options. It's a beautiful thing in life to have options.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are founders of international charity and educational partner, Free The Children. Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in eight cities across Canada this year, inspiring more than 100,000 attendees. For more information, visit www.weday.com]]>
