When one thinks of individuals who’ve had a positive effect on Canadian society, the family name Kielberger comes to mind. In 1995, when Craig and Marc Kielberger — then aged 12 and 18 respectively — co-founded Free The Children: Children Helping Children Through Education (FTC), their international development and youth empowerment organization, little did they imagine their passion to fight child labour worldwide would turn into a powerful voice for change and social justice that now boasts millions of volunteers.

The Kielberger name has since become synonymous with positive change and social activism and according to Marc the mission is only just beginning.

CharityVillage® caught up with the elder Kielberger last week while he was between speaking engagements in Alberta and asked him about his views on motivation, how best to affect change, and where he feels FTC is headed.

CharityVillage®: What keeps you motivated?

Marc Kielberger: A lot of things. For example, right now I’m speaking to you from Bonnyville, AB. We’re driving back to Edmonton now, but I was here with 750 educators talking to them about social justice and social change. And I know it sounds really random, but Bonnyville is one of Free The Children’s hotbeds of activity. We’ve got all the schools involved and literally hundreds of students and teachers involved. It’s a community that’s sometimes rural, sometimes urban, sometimes poor, and sometimes wealthy…but they all care about civil justice. That’s kept me really motivated, meeting these teachers and students.

CV: What kind of feedback do you get when you visit these places and give your talks?

MK: What we want to do is educate people and spur them to action. A lot of people in the social justice realm sometimes simply overeducate and under act with their target audiences. We try to find that healthy balance. We don’t always get it right, but we do our best. The point is that our concern is not so much about how people feel; it’s about what they do. So we want them to feel engaged. Sometimes they feel bad, sometimes motivated, and apathetic but what they do with those feelings is really critical. We want them to build that school, travel and visit communities. We deem success through their level of engagement.

CV: You’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of children and people with your organization. Did you sense it would get this big? What are your thoughts on where you are now from when you started?

MK: We certainly didn’t think it would be this big. We just wanted to build that first school and then we set our sights on 10 schools. Then we had this ambition to build 100 schools. Six hundred and fifteen some odd schools later, we’re continuing the engagement and working with 1 million people who are active Free The Children members. We’re in 4,000 high schools and elementary schools across North America, and it continues to grow. We just opened an office in London, England. Our activities in Japan are growing immeasurably. We’re really seeing a global movement in young people who want to engage.

CV: Your work is tough to quantify, but quality-wise, do you feel you’ve accomplished what you wanted thus far?

MK: Our ultimate goal is to put ourselves out of business and not have to worry about the state of primary and basic education around the world. So we have a long way to go before we hit that goal. But we’re very pleased with the action that has already taken place. Here’s something I’d like to share with you: this is the first generation in history that can actually end poverty in our lifetime. This is a really exciting, huge opportunity. Every generation has a social justice goal and challenge, and this is ours. We’re not going to stop until we’re done. We think we’re actually gonna do this.

CV: With regards to the upcoming United Nations General Assembly [UNGA] and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling — is Free The Children involved in this in any capacity?

MK: We are indirectly. We are closely identified with the MDGs, but we are not going to be at the UNGA [Sept 20-22, 2010]. But a day or two after the assembly, we are going to be hosting WeDay in Toronto. And we’ll have Nobel Peace Laureates coming and heads of state from Africa come talk to nearly 20,000 student leaders about the MDGs. So while our organizational mission is very much focused on the goals, we don’t like to engage ourselves in the bureaucracy from the implementation level.

CV: What advice do you give youth who want to do what you do?

MK: One, I tell them to educate themselves as much as possible on this issue so they can speak intelligently about it. Two, is take concrete action. Feeling bad doesn’t go very far when it comes to implementation. Three…engage with people in the process. That’s what we try and do in schools; give them tangible resources and teach them to use peer pressure in a positive way.

When you take a look at something like WeDay, we’re going to have artists like K’naan and Hedley and all these amazing bands who the kids love, emulate, and look up to…and when they talk about social justice as well, all of a sudden you get a new demographic. We want as many people involved in this movement.

CV: Is FTC involved at all in relief for Pakistan flood victims?

MK: We are not, but we’re involved in this general issue. Last week I was in northern India where some of our projects are, and where there is also some flooding — and I stress that the flooding there is nowhere near as bad as in Pakistan — the communities we’re working with there are going to have major challenges as well. So that’s where we’re concentrating our efforts.

CV: On a personal level, how does it feel to know you’ve engaged so many people and effected so much change so far?

MK: We’re very humbled by what’s transpired. Craig and I have worked very hard because we just love what we do everyday. Every day is a new adventure and we just want to get as many people involved as possible and focus on the big picture. It’s all about the mission and as long as we keep sight of that, we’ll have a fighting chance to continue to do our work in a productive way.

CV: Does FTC get any help from any level of government?

MK: The provincial government is very supportive. The Ontario Ministry of Education is supportive. We try to work with the ministry both from a curriculum point of view and from a student-engagement point-of-view around character education. We receive a bit of provincial funding but no federal funding. We receive no funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), but that’s because we don’t want to get bogged down in working within the federal bureaucracy if we can avoid it. We’re very happy with working outside of the [governmental] system because we feel we can do things quickly.

CV: What are the next steps for your organization? How do you envision the next decade?

MK: We’ve been able to work in thousands of schools in Canada. We just opened up an office in California and we’re bringing [FTC’s] model down to the States, which is a totally different market for a variety of reasons, one of which is because the [US] educational system is so challenged. We really want to expand in the US and in England. Those are the two areas we’re focused on now. But our second focus is the projects we do overseas. We’re now going into much larger infrastructure projects [not just school launches]. This week we’re opening up a very large medical centre, for example. And we’re opening up a large girls boarding high school. So we’re now able to go into more complex programs and projects, from a development point of view, in addition to the ones we’ve already done.

CV: Any plans to move into China?

MK: We already have an office in Beijing and 6,000 kids in a school in China in the Guangzhou province. This is one of poorest provinces and is being affected right now by flooding and mudslides. That said, we think [China] is a really important area. Because the areas there in which we work, the average per capita annual income, and I want to stress this, the annual income is $90. And because China is an emerging superpower, we need to start talking about things in a much more productive way around social justice and around leadership and youth engagement there. They’re about to assume so much responsibility in the world, and the only way we have a chance from a political point, a geographic point, an environmental point…is we need to engage this next generation in conversations now. Kids need to be at the forefront of this.

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

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