Bilaal Rajan can't meet tomorrow, his mother, Shamim Rajan explains, as he has a previous engagement: He has to go to the zoo. He can, however, squeeze in a late dinner interview at his favourite Toronto restaurant, Richtree Market. (He loves the potato rosti and schnitzel.) Just prior to our rendezvous, Bilaal's assistant sends me a list of suggested talking points. Apart from the fact that Bilaal has braces, arrives to the interview with his mother and an exchange-student friend, Sam, and manages to consume an Everest-worth of rosti with the appetite and velocity of, well, a 12-year-old boy, I might as well be meeting an elected official.
Bilaal, who cites Gandhi and the Aga Khan as his heroes, is an activist, Unicef children's ambassador and motivational speaker. He has raised funds of nearly $5-million for causes that range from the victims of hurricane-ravaged Haiti to HIV/AIDS orphans.
He's just written his first a book, Making Change: Tips from an Underage Overachiever. Last month, he convinced a few thousand people to go shoeless with him for National Volunteer Week to raise awareness of the suffering of children around the world.
"The Aga Khan devoted the last 50 years of his life to helping humanity. And if one man can serve the world for 50 years, why can't I do it for a while?" Bilaal tells me. When he grows up he intends on becoming an astronaut, an activist and a neuroscientist. He wants to go to Harvard University, where he would like to study business, economy and astronomy. "Oh, and neurosurgery!" he adds, as though he were just adding another topping on his favourite pizza.
He started fundraising eight years ago, when he was 4, for the earthquake victims in Gujarat, India. He explains the light-bulb moment with a been-there-done-that practised aplomb: "I saw a picture in the newspaper and it was one of total devastation. It simply put one thought into my mind and that was: Because you live in a different place, it shouldn't mean that you have to suffer such a tragedy." This thought came to his four-year-old consciousness at the breakfast table while he was eating a clementine, so he decided to raise money by selling clementines door to door. "I raised $350. It was a small spark that lit a huge fire underneath me and I've kept the ball rolling ever since," he says flatly. By age 8, he was raising $50,000 for hurricane victims in Haiti, by selling cookie boxes with his friends.
Bilaal felt equally impelled to help victims of the 2004 tsunami. He heard about it as he was dozing off in the back seat his parents' car. It was late and the Rajans were heading back to their home in Richmond Hill, Ont., after spending Christmas break in Niagara Falls. Bilaal recalls: "I fell asleep thinking about the tsunami, woke up and said, 'I'm not going to let this one go, either!' " So Bilaal approached Unicef and launched a challenge: for every child across Canada to raise $100. "My goal was to raise $1-million. We ended up raising $4-million," he says, then picks up his straw to peer through it like he would a telescope, giggles and flashes a silvery smile.
Since then, Unicef Canada named Bilaal its national child representative, he spent a summer volunteering in rural Tanzania, teaching children about HIV and AIDS, and travelled to Ecuador to help build schools.
He puts down his straw and continues: "Fundraising has always been my passion."
