Resources for Teachers and Students

Prepare: Craig Kielburger first became involved as a child advocate at the age of twelve. By the time he was 21 years old, he had traveled to 40 countries in pursuit of children's rights. His biography can be found on the website of Free The Children, an organization he helped found.

Read: Craig Kielburger wrote an original essay for the Architects of Peace project. In it, he discusses the dream of eliminating child poverty within the world community, a dream he thinks is attainable.

Explore: In his Architects of Peace essay, Kielburger claims that for a spending increase of less money than Americans spend on cosmetics in one year, we could put every child on the planet in school. Is this true? Are there statistics available regarding the number of children worldwide who live without the benefits of education? If so, how much more money would it cost to educate them? Use an internet search engine to attempt to gather data pertinent to these questions.

Write: Advocacy areas concentrated upon within the Free the Children network include: war-affected children, child labor, sexual exploitation, and child poverty. In each of these areas, a major strategy among child advocates is to increase public awareness regarding the extent of the problem. Toward that end, write a three-to-five page abstract about the child advocacy concern of your choice, attempting to gather statistics from the website of a reputable international organization such as the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross, the Children's Defense Fund, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.

Extend: A major project of Kielburger's Free the Children organization is called the "Schools for Peace Program,"; which is aimed at building schools in war-torn countries around the world. To fund this effort, the organization relies heavily on local fundraising projects conducted by young people themselves. Suggestions on how to organize such a project can be found on their website.

Additional Resource: Recently, the United Nations has appointed a Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict. This person's mandate is to act as an advocate building awareness of the needs of war-affected children.

Biography of Craig Kielburger