Newsroom

MDRT Foundation Awards $5,000 to Free the Children

More than 10 years ago, a newspaper article read by 12-year-old Craig Kielburger would change the fate of hundreds of thousands of children worldwide.

Adelia Chung presents a $5,000 grant to Marc Kielburger of Free the Children.

This article was about a 12-year-old Pakistani boy who was murdered for publicly speaking out against harsh child labor laws. Because of those laws, he was sold into labor when he was 3 years old. Kielburger was appalled by the unfair laws that persecute thousands of innocent children throughout the world, and he decided to do something to create change — he, along with 11 childhood friends, founded Free the Children (FTC).

During the Top of the Table meeting in Maui, Hawaii, Immediate Past President and Platinum Knight Adelia C. Chung, CLU, ChFC, of Honolulu, Hawaii, presented a $5,000 grant to Marc Kielburger (Craig’s older brother), the chief executive director of FTC, on behalf of the MDRT Foundation.

“There are 130 million children between the ages of 5 and 11 who don’t have the opportunity to go to school,” Kielburger said.

FTC, based in Toronto, Canada, is a nonprofit that works to free children from poverty and exploitation throughout the world. FTC’s mission is to empower children through free educational programs that will ultimately inspire positive social change. Since 1998, in partnership with Oprah’s Angel Network, FTC has built more than 400 schools in 12 countries educating and empowering more than 35,000 children each day in some of the poorest communities across the globe.