The 12-year-old Craig Kielburger recruits 11 classmates to help end child labour after he read about the murder of escaped child slave 12-year-old Iqbal Masih. The group chooses the name Free The Children.

June of 1995The group mails a shoebox to the Indian prime minister containing a 3,000-signature petition demanding the release of child rights crusader (and future Nobel laureate) Kailash Satyarthi

Craig Kielburger is the keynote speaker at the Ontario Federation of Labour. They pledge $150,000 to build a rehabilitation centre for rescued child labourers.

Mr. Kielburger takes a seven-week trip to South Asia to visit child labourers.

Free The Children is featured on 60 Minutes.

Donations from around the world help construct Free The Children’s first schools in Nicaragua, India, Kenya and Ecuador. The first summer leadership camp begins.

Mr. Kielburger publishes his first best-selling book, Free The Children, based on his 1995 trip to South Asia. The documentary, It Takes a Child, is released.

Mr. Kielburger appears on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Ms. Winfrey commits to help Free The Children build 60 more schools.

Free The Children launches the Adopt a Village development model, partnering with communities in eight countries. It provides education, clean water, health care, food security and alternative income.

Bogani Cottages and Tented Camp opens in Kenya to host youth and families for Me to We volunteer trips every year. Similar camps are now in the Ecuadorian Amazon, northwestern India and the Arizona-Mexico border.

Craig and Marc Kielburger publish their best-selling book Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World. They create Me to We to offer socially conscious products and experiences.

The Free The Children community gathers in Toronto to celebrate the life of youth speaker and mentor Joe Opatowski, who had died a week earlier in a car accident.

Roxanne Joyal starts Me to We Artisans, which helps more than 1,400 Maasai women sell their handmade beadwork, empowering and providing them with a reliable income.

The first We Day in Toronto celebrates young people’s potential to change the world.

Free The Children opens offices in California and Quebec. Offices have since opened in British Columbia, London and five more U.S. states.

Free The Children and Royal Bank of Canada launch the first We Create Change drive that provides 56,000 people overseas with clean water.

The first We Day in Europe at London’s SSE Arena, with Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, Sir Richard Branson and Prince Harry.

Free The Children and Telus launch the WE365 digital community and mobile app.