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."
His Barefoot Challenge was an attempt to build empathy with underprivileged children around the world. "I found that the best way to get people up to date," he explains, "is by giving them first-hand experience." By grace of a Facebook e-mail blast, Bilaal galvanized people in 12 countries to give up footwear for a week. "I stepped on broken glass, got four blisters and seven spider bites," he tells me with pride - each casualty a miniature badge of courage. The pain was the point, he explains.
"Challenges are something we'll face," he muses, "they're part of life." Some other challenges he's faced have come from some of his classmates, less keen on his altruistic mission. "You do get negativity sometimes," he says. Some kids have sent him rude notes on Facebook. "But that doesn't hinder me at all."
He prefers to focus on positive things. And he shares his yes-you-can philosophic imperatives with the kind of certainty that is the happy province of childhood. "I tell this to everyone because I think it's really important," he says. "There are three steps to being successful." The first - find your passion - must be followed by taking action, Bilaal counsels me gravely. He cautions: "You may find your passion, but you're not going anywhere without acting on it."
Before Bilaal makes it to the third step, his mother, who has been sitting quietly until now, interjects softly: "Bilaal, you are not eating enough protein tonight," she says.
"It's okay, Mom," says Bilaal, anxious to get back to a crucial moment in his doctrine on life. "So: Take action!" he resumes insistently. "As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, there are many ways to move forward and only one way to stand still. And it's absolutely true."
Having said all of that, he takes a deep breath and is ready to field questions. He's used to questions since he gets them often when he lectures. (The following day, he's speaking at a local elementary school, and the day after that, he'll be speaking at Lakefield College in Peterborough, Ont., where the headmaster went barefoot in response to Bilaal's challenge.) He doesn't get nervous, he explains. In fact, he's not really scared of anything. "Maybe skydiving?" he says, looking searchingly at his mom, "And I don't like insects. But I'm not really scared of them."
Over three scoops of Oreo cookie ice cream, Bilaal tells me about what he does when he's not sending e-mail blasts, raising millions or doing homework: He loves to read Harry Potter and autobiographies (past favourites include Richard Branson's Screw It, Let's Do It and Bill Gates's The Road Ahead ). When he watches TV - which is almost never - he favours the Discovery Channel ("I like watching programs that give me something to think about") and, as for music, he likes U2 and Sting ("I like them because their music has messages"). He explains his thoughts on playing in an alarmingly non-playful fashion, as though he were outlining his political platform: "For me, playing is not about video games. I do like being physically active, though." Bilaal takes his last forklift-sized bite of ice cream.
I suggest he probably needs to tuck in soon, given his busy day tomorrow - he's lecturing at 8:15 a.m.
But before he can answer, his mom's cellphone rings. It's the next interviewer calling.
"Bilaal, it's for you," she says, "It's Singapore on the line."