These are Craig's notes for his presentation.
In the live presentation, he occasionally varied from them, but they give the sense of what was said.

Thank you, friends.

“We who have a voice must be the voice, for the voiceless”. Archbishop Oscar Romero, a hero of mine, spoke these words only days before his assassination. His crime you ask? Working on behalf of Latin America’s poor. His call to action was brought to mind by today’s scripture reading from Proverbs: “Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless. Speak for them and be a righteous judge. Protect the rights of the poor and needy.” These words resonate.

The International Peace Award carries with it a similar challenge. On behalf of Free the Children and our youth members, I wish to express our deepest appreciation and gratitude for being named the twelfth recipient of this distinguished award. My thanks especially to President Stephen Veazey, for his belief in the power of young people, and to Andrew Bolton, for his warmth and guidance. It is an honour to receive this commendation from an organization with such a long and acclaimed history as champions for international peace and justice. The Community of Christ has been a social-justice advocate since its early beginnings among the poor on the USA frontier in the 1830s. Your movement began with young people; Joseph Smith Jr. was only fourteen when he had his first vision, only twenty-four when he began your church. Today an international movement in over fifty nations, Community of Christ carries the torch forward through child advocacy, campaigns to support conscientious objection to war, and in their fight to bring recognition to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

In accepting this recognition, we are privileged to follow in the footsteps of civil rights leaders and peace builders. Many of the previous awardees are role models in my own life, and I am fortunate to call them friends. They include such visionaries as Jane Goodall, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, and Marian Wright Edelman. I thank you for your inspiration.

In comparison with their work, our organization is merely a heartbeat in the history of the struggle for social justice. Rev. James Lawson and Marian Wright Edelman marched with Dr. King in one of the greatest human-rights victories of all time: the civil rights movement. Today Ela Gandhi continues the work her grandfather began when he brought a doctrine of nonviolence to bear on the decolonization movement in India. These brief moments in time forever changed the course of history, and in the process they defined a generation.

Standing before you today, as a representative of a youth-led organization, is deeply symbolic. The Community of Christ’s choice to recognize Free the Children in such a way runs much deeper than can be imagined. In their decision, I believe that the Community of Christ aims to pay tribute to all of the young people who are working to better our global community. In the spirit of Archbishop Romero’s words and today’s scripture, we, as young people, are being challenged to carry forward the vision passed to us by the social justice leaders of past generations. This award is meant as much for you as for us.

Sadly, history tends to forget that young people have always been at the forefront of the world’s great social justice movements. You forget that your own movement was begun by young people. When the idea of these movements was first born—when victory was far from assured and change seemed impossible—it was young people who dreamed of a better world and who set themselves to achieving that goal. Students, younger than you or I, bore the brunt of the water cannons and the attack dogs during the bus boycotts and freedom rides for civil rights. During the salt marches for independence, Indian children were arrested by the hundreds. Young people were shot and killed as they protested against apartheid in South Africa.

Let me ask you now. What is our social justice movement? What is the struggle to be fought for in our time? by our generation?

Some adults say that the age of great movements is dead, that young people today are too comfortable, even apathetic. Some adults say that low voter turn-out of youth shows we have forgotten the sacrifices of Susan B. Anthony, a woman who fought to ensure that all people—men and women both—had the right to cast a ballot. Some adults say that the race-based violence in our schools shows we have forgotten the struggles of Booker T. Washington and Dr. King to ensure that people are judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. Some adults say that because the youth channel of choice is MTV instead of the news, we have forgotten the example of Mother Teresa to never ignore the sufferings of others.

To these adults, I say you are wrong.

Some young people say there is nothing left to fight for—that all battles have been won. Some young people say that there is no movement to join. Where are the protests? the boycotts? the underground newspapers? Are they simply part of the ‘flower power’ of the past? Some young people say that even if they raise their voice, it’s futile, it’s pointless, it’s wasted—we can’t make a difference. We have to wait until we are older, until we graduate from high school, go to college or university, get a job, gain money and a position of influence—only then can we make a positive change in the world.

To these youth, I say that you, too, are wrong.

This is a time for action. We are not apathetic! There is much left to fight for! In our work, we have a slogan: “We are the generation that we have been waiting for!” And this means that we are not simply the leaders of tomorrow. We are called to be the leaders of today!

I believe that the challenge that falls upon our generation is the most ambitious and the most urgent in human history. For the first time, we have the means to bring an end to absolute poverty within our lifetime. Let me say it again: we can end the bitter, crippling, and destructive poverty 1.2 billion people live with on a daily basis.

To some this may seem like an idealist’s notion, but it is no more impossible than the goals set by those who campaigned to end the African slave trade or those who argued for women to be treated as people and not property. Last year world governments broke the $1 trillion mark on military expenditures. Meanwhile, the world population spent $400 billion on cigarettes and $180 billion drinking beer. Sadly, it would cost only a fraction of these costs to make poverty history.

Please take a moment and think about these numbers. Please think about what they mean for the life of a child born today into desperate poverty. As President Veazey mentioned, I’ve been fortunate to travel to more than forty countries and to meet with street, working, and war-affected children. In Brazil, I met with children who spent their days in the mines and sugarcane fields instead of the classroom. I visited rural communities in Pakistan where children are bought and sold as slaves. I have visited Sierra Leone, West Africa, the site of a brutal civil war where 30,000 children fought as child soldiers. There, community members described to us how the rebels ‘recruited’ children by burning their schools to the ground and executing their teachers.

Outside Manila, the capital of the Philippines, I met eight-year-old Jeffrey. He lived and worked in a garbage dump. When I asked him—as I ask many of the children I meet in my travels—if he had ever been to school, he looked perplexed. He remained silent for a long while. Then he looked up at his father and innocently asked, “What’s school?” I then learned that in all of his eight years, Jeffrey had never once left the garbage dump where he was born. Not only had he never been to school, he did not even know the meaning of the word.

We can make education available to Jeffrey and to the 130 million other children who have never seen the inside of a classroom. To fund universal literacy would cost an extra $5 billion a year—we spend three times that amount on perfume. We can provide clean drinking water to all of the world’s people for an additional $10 billion—we spend $14 billion on ocean cruises. We can provide antiretroviral drugs and health education to help stem the spread of HIV/AIDS for only $10 billion—less than what is spent on ice cream in Europe. And we can end hunger and malnutrition for $18 billion—about what we spent last year on makeup. These actions would prevent the deaths of more than 50,000 people every day—30,000 children. But while we wait, debating whether our society has the political, economic, and moral will to act, child after child is dying because of poverty: one every three seconds.

Earlier this month more than two million people gathered to attend Live8 concerts around the world. They challenged government leaders to provide more development aid, make trade truly free, and forgive the debt of the most burdened nations. I am proud to say that my voice was one of the many calling for change. And I wear this white band to symbolize my commitment. Yet, some may argue that the event was unsuccessful because G8 governments failed to increase aid funding to .7 percent of their countries’ GDP. The critics, however, miss the point: this is a movement, still in its infant stages, but gaining strength every day.

No one can predict the future, but I can tell you that this movement will be unlike any in history. With mass communication a mouse click away and twent-four-hour news beamed to us from around the world, this movement will be global in scope. Where young people now have more disposable income than at any point in history and can make their voice heard through responsible shopping choices, this movement will embrace new forms of youth empowerment. With collective events like ‘Rock the Vote’ and Live8 concerts, this movement will be loud and proud and embody the words of labour activist Mother Jones: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution”. But what will make this movement different from any other is that it will be lived through daily acts of compassion. It won’t have a single recognizable leader because all of us will lead together. We need only choose what role we will play.

The most amazing part about this new movement? You are already living it. Every time that you are shopping for a product and ask the manufacture if it is child-labour free, then you are living this movement. Every time that you sign an online petition or visit a Web site to learn more about a social justice issue, then you are living this movement. Every time that you volunteer locally or internationally to help build a home for a family or to coach younger kids in sports, then you are living this movement. To think and act as global citizens is revolutionary.

We may not see protests or mass marches. Your daily acts of compassion and of kindness may not scream across the front-page of newspapers. But as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” There are about eight hundred young people with us today. Imagine—just imagine for a moment—that every person here committed themselves to living this movement through these daily actions: responsible shopping, voting for change, volunteering in the community, and learning about pressing world issues. Imagine the change we could bring about. Now imagine if you returned to your churches, schools, friends, and family to spread this message. Imagine the positive actions multiplied a hundred, a thousand-fold. We would be unstoppable!

Some of you might be thinking: “It’s hard enough to organize a group of young people to come to the International Youth Forum, never mind the challenge of rallying young people across the United States and around the world.” But that is exactly what has been happening over the past ten years.

Our organization, Free the Children, coordinates the actions of more than one hundred thousand youth every year through our projects and campaigns. These young people, like yourselves, choose to stand up, speak out, and strive for a better world.

We each receive our calling in a different form. Mine happened when I was twelve years old. One morning, while looking for the comics in the paper, I read an article about a young boy in Pakistan who was sold into slavery when he was only four. He escaped, spoke out against child labour, and was killed; murdered at the age of twelve. We were the same age, but the difference in our lives shocked me. I remember being so angry in reading that newspaper article that I ripped it out of the paper. I read that article to my seventh grade class and asked for their help. About eleven hands went up—and we became known as ‘the group of twelve twelve-year olds’.

Our small movement has since grown exponentially. Today, Free the Children is the world’s largest network of children helping children through education, having improved the lives of more than one million children in forty-five countries. We are a youth-led movement, with chapters in elementary, high school, and university campuses around the world. Through car washes and rock-a-thons, students have raised money to help more than one million children around the world. We have built more than four hundred primary schools, providing education daily to 35,000 children. We have distributed more than 200,000 school and health kits. We founded a sister organization called Leaders Today, which provides global citizenship training to more than 250,000 students annually in North America. Every year, around 375 students volunteer at our projects in India, Kenya, Thailand, Mexico, and Ecuador. These young people go to serve a cause and their lives are forever changed.

It was during one of our overseas volunteer trips that I was reminded that people don’t need money or power to better the world, merely the willingness to come together and work in a spirit of solidarity. A few years ago, our organization brought twenty student volunteers from the USA. and Canada high into the Andes Mountains of Ecuador to build a primary school in an indigenous community. Running behind schedule (an animal traffic jam stalled the mules that were carrying our construction supplies up the mountain!), we asked the advice of the village elder. Explaining that we had return plane tickets and would not be able to complete the project, she replied, “No problem. I’ll call a minga”.

In the local dialect of Puruhae India, she forcefully shouted, “A minga will happen tomorrow”. The next day, hundreds of people arrived. Men left their fields at peak harvest time. Women carried babies on their back. Children walked miles to help construct a distant school that they would never be able to attend because of the long journey it would take to reach it. The crowd asked for nothing in return and even brought food to share with the village.

Amazed, we asked the chief, “What happened? What is a minga?” She explained that this traditional word is a call to action—it means ‘a community coming together to work for the benefit of all’. When people hear this word, they stop all personal activities and come together for the collective good. Our translator struggled to explain the idea, and he finally asked us: “What is the word for ‘minga’ in English?” Huh? My brother and I looked at each other. We were dumbfounded. It wasn’t volunteer work—you could do that alone. Mission work? Not really. A minga is like a riot of people coming together, but not for evil—for good. The closest phrase we could think of was ‘barn-raising’. But we just don’t see too many barns going up in downtown Independence, Missouri, these days—now do we?

Linguists tell us that language reflects culture. The more words you have for something, the more important it is for your culture. We have dozens of words for money: cash, credit, dollars, cents, a buck, greenback, and in Canada we even have the Loonie. But there is no translation of minga into English. What does this say about our western culture?

Perhaps those of us in this room might translate a ‘community coming together to work for the benefit of all’ as a Community of Christ. Isn’t this what Community of Christ means in the word Zion—gathering, creating a “riot for good” to build God’s kingdom on earth? Service to others is living our faith. Many previous award recipients were individuals who were motivated by their faith to serve: Jean Vanier, Rev. Marie Fortune, and Rev. James Lawson. But for me, it was service to others which led me to my faith. I grew up in a religious community, but never truly felt connected to the rituals I was born into. It was only while traveling overseas that I finally understood the meaning of the parables, and finally found my answer. If someone is hungry, feed them. If someone is cold, clothe them. If someone is lonely, befriend them. It isn’t complicated, really. We each choose our own path. My faith just happens to come alive through action.

The person who taught me the true meaning of faith in action was one of my greatest heroes: Mother Teresa. I once had the honour of spending time with Mother Teresa at her center for orphans in Calcutta, India—shortly before she passed away.

Mother Teresa taught me a profound lesson: that we do not have to be rich or powerful to help people. She was a tiny woman, only about five feet tall. But with a huge heart she helped those dismissed by society as beyond help—the poorest of the poor. She practiced simple acts of kindness, guided by the belief everyone should be able to live and die with dignity.

As I was about to leave the center, Mother Teresa walked me to the door. She held my hands in hers and looked deeply into my eyes. She told me to never be discouraged by the suffering and the injustice in our world, and she then said, “Remember, in our lives we can do no great things, but we can do small things with great love.”

Before we close, I want to ask you to make a commitment to live Mother Teresa’s words of engaging in a small action with great love. We are going to ask your delegation leaders to come forward and first light a candle from the Peace Candle. They will pick up flash lights for each of you. I light a candle from the Peace Candle that is lit every day here in the daily Prayer for Peace in the Temple. Dave, Ken, Steve and young people also light a candle from the Peace Candle. [Candles were lit by delegation leaders, and small flashlights were given to campers.]

Will you be a voice for the voiceless?

I Will!

Will you be an advocate for the children?

Will we become the generation the world has been waiting for?

Will you work to make a difference?

I Will!

Will you carry the torch for peace?

Will you riot for good?

Will you riot for good?