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

All I Want for Christmas

When I was a kid, I remember hearing stories about the greater meaning behind Christmas, and what the spirit of the season is supposed to be about. But in between our frantic shopping and obsessive decorating, we somehow forget the bigger picture. Despite this seasonal spell of unavoidable hype, there are ways to calm our busybody habits and put them to good use.

The power of philanthropy was something I discovered when visiting El Salvador in 2001. Staying at the Hogar del Niño hospital for handicapped and abandoned children, Read more