The accidental activists: Craig and Marc Kielburger

Fortunately, yes. Both Marc and Craig are as down-to-earth as they come; they're both warm, friendly and quick to laugh. Craig is a people person who listens intently and asks lots of questions. He talks about how much fun he has connecting to the young children he meets in his travels by making faces and playing peekaboo games with them. Marc peppers his conversation with adjectives such as "cool" and finishes every conversation about his work with some statement that reveals just how fortunate he feels to be doing it. And both brothers will modestly tell you they believe that everyone, in his or her own
way, can do what they both do. "We're both accidental activists," says Marc, adding they slowly got hooked on the joys of helping others.

Where it all began
Craig's role model for getting involved in social change was brother Marc. At 13, Marc became interested in environmental issues and eventually developed environmentally friendly cleaning products for a high school science project. He started collecting names on petitions for various environmental initiatives and enlisted his little brother, Craig, to help out. "He'd get me to go up and ask the girls to sign. They always would because I was so cute," says Craig, laughing.

So the seed of social consciousness was already planted when at age 12 Craig read with great dismay in the morning paper about the killing of another 12-year-old, Iqbal Masih, a freed child labourer from Pakistan. Indeed, he was so moved by Iqbal's struggles to end child labour and his eventual murder that he couldn't stop thinking about it. "I was shocked, and then I thought, What can I do? I'm only one person."

They caught the charity bug
But then Craig recalled Marc's zeal in raising people's awareness of environmental issues and that struck a chord. "I remember thinking, If he could do it, I can, too." A few weeks later, with the help of his school librarian, Craig had gathered enough information and mustered up the courage to talk to his Grade 7 class about child labour and ask if other kids wanted to join a group to fight against it. That first step back in 1995 eventually led to the participation of hundreds of thousands of children in 35 countries.

Craig and Marc's parents, Theresa and Fred, now retired schoolteachers, were big on supporting their kids in whatever they wanted to try. But they didn't set out to raise activists. Marc and Craig simply dragged them, but not unwillingly, along for the ride. "Sometimes our parents wonder where we really came from," jokes Marc.

Page 2 of 5 - Read page three to find out about Craig and Marc's parents played a roll in getting them into the charity business.