Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez, known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. In a career spanning six decades he received numerous accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Fred McFeely Rogers, better known as Mister Rogers, was an American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001.
Richard Marvin Hansen is a Canadian track and field athlete, activist, and philanthropist for people with disabilities. Following a pickup truck crash at the age of 15, Hansen sustained a spinal cord injury and became a paraplegic. Hansen is most famous for his Man in Motion World Tour, in which he circled the globe in a wheelchair to raise funds for charity. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was one of the final torchbearers in the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was profiled and spoke during the 2010 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony.
Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan.
Raffi Cavoukian,, known professionally by the mononym Raffi, is an Armenian-Canadian singer-lyricist and author born in Egypt best known for his children's music. He developed his career as a "global troubadour" to become a music producer, author, entrepreneur, and founder of the Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring.
Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for civil rights and children's rights. She is the founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund. She influenced leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Gary Andrew Younge, is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and academic. He was editor-at-large for The Guardian newspaper, which he joined in 1993. In November 2019, it was announced that Younge had been appointed as professor of sociology at the University of Manchester and would be leaving his post at The Guardian, where he was a columnist for two decades, although he continued to write for the newspaper. He also writes for the New Statesman.
WE Charity, formerly known as Free the Children, is an international development charity and youth empowerment movement founded in 1995 by human rights advocates Marc and Craig Kielburger. The organization implemented development programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America, focusing on education, water, health, food and economic opportunity. It also runs domestic programming for young people in Canada, the US and UK, promoting corporate-sponsored service learning and active citizenship. Charity Intelligence, a registered Canadian charity that rates over 750 Canadian charities, rates the "demonstrated impact" per dollar of We Charity as "Low" and has issued a "Donor Advisory" due to We Charity replacing most of its board of directors in 2020.
Martin Luther King III is an American human rights activist, philanthropist and advocate. The elder son of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, King served as the fourth president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1997 to 2004. As of 2024, he is a Professor of practice at the University of Virginia.
The Community of Christ International Peace Award was established to honor and bring attention to the work of peacemaking and peacemakers in the world. It has been bestowed on an individual each year since 1993.
Marc Kielburger is a Canadian author, social entrepreneur, columnist, humanitarian and activist for children's rights. He is the co-founder, along with his brother Craig, of the We Movement, which consists of the WE Charity, an international development and youth empowerment organization; Me to We, a for-profit company selling lifestyle products, leadership training and travel experience; and We Day, an annual youth empowerment event. In 2010, he was named a member of the Order of Canada by the Governor General of Canada.
Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian social reformer who campaigned against child labor in India and advocated the universal right to education.
Me to We is a for-profit company selling lifestyle products, leadership training and travel experience. Me to We was founded in 2008 by brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger. ME to WE’s engagements with the Trudeau family came under scrutiny after Justin Trudeau’s government awarded WE Charity a contract to administer the proposed Canada Student Service Grant program.
We Day was an annual series of stadium-sized youth empowerment events organized by We Charity, a Canadian charity founded by brothers Marc and Craig Kielburger. WE Day events host tens of thousands of students and celebrate the effect they have made on local and global issues. Students earn their tickets by participating in the We Schools program, a year-long service learning program run by We Charity. Each event features a lineup of social activists, speakers and musical performances. The event was cancelled in September 2020 with the winding down of Canadian operations of the We Charity, following the WE Charity scandal.
Wali Shah is a Canadian speaker, poet, musician and philanthropist. He has spoken most prominently on topics including bullying, mental health and social change, while creating spoken word poetry specifically tailored to his projects and engagements.
Hannah Alper is a Canadian activist, blogger, and journalist who was active in those fields before her teens.
A political scandal took place in Canada in 2020 regarding the awarding of a federal contract to WE Charity to administer the $912 million Canada Student Service Grant program (CSSG). The controversy arose when it was revealed that the WE charity had previously paid close family of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to appear at its events, despite making claims to the contrary. In total, Craig Kielburger confirmed at a parliamentary committee, WE Charity paid approximately $425,000 to Trudeau's family including expenses. WE Charity also used pictures of Trudeau's family members as celebrity endorsements in their application. Trudeau stated that WE Charity had been uniquely capable of administering the program as "the only possible option", and that it was the civil service, not him, who decided that WE Charity was the best option. It was noted that not only had the charity employed a daughter of former Finance Minister Bill Morneau but a close relationship existed between the minister and members of its staff.
Spencer West is an American motivational speaker and disability advocate. West became an amputee after being born with sacral agenesis. He speaks about overcoming adversity and uses social media to advocate for the disability justice movement and the LGBT community.
What WE Lost: Inside the Attack on Canada's Largest Children's Charity is a book by Tawfiq S. Rangwala which documents the history of Canada's WE Charity scandal and its effects upon WE Charity. Rangwala, a New York City-based Canadian lawyer, sat on WE Charity's board of directors before stepping down in 2021 to write the book.
