Craig Kielburger, who founded a youth-driven organization to help prevent child exploitation when he was 12 years old, has been awarded the 2006 World Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child.
The Thornhill man, who is now 23, started the organization that built schools in developing countries after he read a newspaper article on the death of a Pakistani boy reportedly killed for speaking out against child slavery after escaping his plight as an underage carpet weaver.
"Why I started Free the Children was seeing this story and feeling angry about it," Mr. Kielburger said yesterday in a phone interview from Stockholm after winning the prize, which is also known as the Children's Nobel Prize.
The award, worth about $114,000, is split into three parts and honours efforts to improve the lives of children around the world. Previous winners include former South African president Nelson Mandela, Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who penned a diary of her life before being killed by the Nazis, and Iqbal Masih, the child slave whose death sparked Mr. Kielburger's campaign.
Mr. Kielburger said he hopes the prize will inspire children across the world to follow in his footsteps.
"In awarding the World Children's Prize to a group of young people, I think that the jury is sending a message that, even at a young age, you don't have to be an adult or a politician or a Mandela . . . to make a big difference," he said.
His charity, which celebrates its 11th anniversary today, has built more than 425 schools in 23 countries and helped provide clean water to more than 100,000 children.
Mr. Kielburger shares the award with a group of orphans whose parents were slaughtered during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, and the Dalai Lama's sister.
He said it is gratifying to be in such esteemed company, but says he is more moved by the child jurors, whose own freedoms have been violated.
"It's humbling when a former child slave or a child who was previously forced into the sex trade or a child who lost a limb from a land mine presents an award because they understand what child's rights are."