ALIGNED Proudly Supports Free The Children
ALIGNED Insurance believes that it is a privilege to handle our clients insurance needs and that it is our corporate social responsibility to give generously and regularly to support the great work charitable and not profits organizations do every day across Canada.
As part of our commitment to give regularly, every month an ALIGNED Advocate selects a Canadian charity of their choice and ALIGNED makes a donation to that organization on their behalf. In recognition of the great work they do Sally Commandant selected Free The Children for October, 2015.
The Free The Children Story
One morning over breakfast, 12-year-old Craig Kielburger was flipping through the newspaper looking for the comics when he was stopped short by a story: Iqbal Masih, a 12-year-old former child slave in Pakistan, had been murdered because he spoke up for human rights.
Craig was 12. Iqbal was 12. In that moment, he was struck by a single and profound connection – except for the happenstance of birth, he could have been Iqbal – and he needed to do something.
But what? He was only one person, and a boy at that. What possible difference could he make in the lives of child slaves a world away?
What was needed: a collective voice. So Craig convinced a handful of Grade 7 classmates that together they could make an impact, and Free The Children was born.Along with his older brother Marc, Craig and his team set out on a bold mission: to free children and their families from poverty and exploitation.
But they soon discovered that freeing children from slavery was not enough—the families of freed children continued to struggle to support themselves and many freed children had to return to work.
Craig and Marc expanded their focus.
Recognizing that there is no single solution to end poverty, Craig and Marc created Adopt a Village, an innovative, holistic approach to development that provides access to five key pillars—education, clean water and sanitation, health care, food security, and alternative income—and empowers a community to lift itself out of poverty.
Together, these five pillars achieve greater impact than each pillar could achieve on its own. A school that also delivers food and clean water programs ensures that girls can go to class, instead of walking long distances to fetch dirty water for their families. A medical clinic plus alternative income programs ensures community health care that families can afford.
Twenty years later, Free The Children is an international charity committed to delivering a sustainable development model that empowers people to transform themselves, their families, their communities and the world.
To Learn More About ALIGNED Insurance, Our Corporate Social Responsibility Program and/or the Free The Children speak to an ALIGNED Insurance Advocate Today.