Humanitaritween Bilaal Rajan

“I don’t know if I consider myself mature for my age but I definitely consider myself an average 13-year-old.” For someone who has shot the breeze with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Roméo Dallaire and Desmond Tutu, Bilaal Rajan is not your typical teenybopper; he’s not even your run-of-the-mill human being. He was just four years old when tackling global poverty became his playground. When I was that age, the idea of selling Clementine oranges door-to-door to raise money for earthquake victims in Gujarat, India, would never have crossed my mind as I pushed Barbie and Ken in a luxurious convertible Corvette across a laminate floor. Your childhood mentality was probably the same.

Let’s be completely honest with each other: making a difference in the world is as far from many of our Western minds as a remote ocean island on the most extreme point of the Earth. Read more