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By Peter Grbac
At age 12, Craig Kielburger founded Free the Children.
He has since won the Order of Canada. In this interview, he looked back on
a dozen years of activism.
Youth Speak News: What role
do young people have in the fight against poverty?
Craig Kielburger: I remember
when Free the Children first began, people would tell us to wait –
wait until you get a job, become an adult and then you can influence
change. But if you really look at every social justice movement in recent
history, they have been led by youth . . .
This is the first generation that has grown up as
global citizens with access to 24-hour news and the internet. We have
globalized technology and commerce, but the only thing we have not
globalized is compassion. This generation has the resources and the ability
to, really, for the first time in human history, end the worst forms of
poverty.
YSN: What role does religion
play in activism, in general?
CK: Religion plays a huge
role in our world, and on so many levels. Religious leaders have led some
of the greatest social justice movements.
Desmond Tutu once told me that he sees the newspaper as
God’s prayer list delivered to his front door. It is a call to
action.
A lot of youth seem to be waiting for a blinding, white
light on the road to Damascus or some voice calling them. We get that call
every single day. For me, it was a newspaper story of a young child from
Pakistan who was slain.
To be a person of faith, you have to live it –
and I believe we are called to live it through service . . . We often
forget that the message we actually hear at a Sunday mass should resonate
beyond a pulpit.
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Do we buy fair trade items? How do we vote? Which
careers will youth pursue? Is it MBA equals BMW, or are we looking at true
development?
YSN: How do you live out
your faith?
CK: My Catholic faith is
incredibly important, but not in traditional ways, especially since I am
rarely home . . .
There are many people, like Mother Teresa, who are
motivated by their faith. The irony for me is that, through service, I
found my faith.
The reality is that ,when you spend time working in
regions of the world, whether in war zones, refugee camps or jails, you see
some extraordinary examples of human compassion that renews your faith.
I don’t think it’s easy to be a
Catholic person today . . . It’s also not easy to live it through
action . . . We hear the message every Sunday. How do you live that
message?
– Courtesy of Youth Speak News (The Catholic Register).
February 2009
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