Lifelong Renter
Free the Children gives employees a place to live
September 10, 2010
David Hayes
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
In 2007, shortly before graduating from Edmonton’s Grant MacEwen College with an anthropology degree, David Johnson went to hear a speech given by Craig Kielburger.
Afterwards he met the dynamic founder of Free the Children, a Toronto-based charity. Free the Children mobilizes young people to help impoverished children throughout the world, so Johnson figured Kielburger would be interested in hearing that he was about to walk 300 kilometres to Calgary to raise awareness about human rights violations in Darfur. Kielburger told Johnson to call him later that summer.
After his Edmonton-to-Calgary walk and three weeks spent volunteering at a community-based development project in Nicaragua, Johnson called Free the Children and was flown to Toronto for an interview. He was hired as a leadership facilitator for the charity’s newly-created We to Me division. (Me to We is a separate, for-profit company offering goods and services — books, DVDs, sweatshop-free apparel, public speakers, leadership training programs, volunteer trips abroad — and channelling all profits back to Free the Children.)
“When I moved to Toronto from Alberta I had nothing but a backpack full of clothes and university loans to pay back,” says Johnson. “Free the Children gave me a place to live, which was incredible.”
One of the many innovative aspects about the charity is its housing program. Free the Children began in the mid-1990s when 12-year-old Craig had a political awakening after reading a Toronto Star article about the death of a child labourer in Pakistan. Soon, his parents’ home in Thornhill was overrun with teenagers fighting child labour and poverty issues. His parents eventually agreed to donate their home to the cause, which by then was being run by Craig and his older brother, Marc. (Today the brothers write a Star column on global issues.)
In 2005, the house was sold to finance the purchase of the charity’s Carlton St. headquarters. With the help of targeted donations and bequests, Free the Children owns five houses (and its social enterprise arm, Me to We, owns two more) that are rent-free homes for many of its young staff — members from Canada and abroad — some living in rooms in a communal environment, others in contained apartments. (Given the modest remuneration typical of the charitable sector, the housing program is worth an estimated $8,000 to $9,000 on top of an annual salary.)
Johnson first shared a two-bedroom apartment with a former child soldier working with Free the Children. Later, he met the woman he calls “the love of his life,” Angelique de Montbrun, a youth programming coordinator who joined the charity in 2007. Today they have two children — 19-month-old Ella and five-month-old Arlo — and live in a two-floor, 850-square-foot apartment a couple of blocks from work.
Sitting in the airy living room, with its L-shaped sofa, white rug and wicker basket filled with toys, de Montbrun, who is on mat leave, says: “At U of T, I’d planned to become a corporate lawyer until I heard Craig speak and went to Guatemala to do agricultural development work. It changed my life. I thought Free the Children, with its idealistic goals, was a perfect fit. Being provided housing means that we can have a family and continue doing the work that we love. ”
The 15-year-old philanthropic organization generated nearly $24 million in donations from Canada and the U.S. last year. It has built hundreds of schools in 16 countries, and its Adopt A Village program — which provides education, health care and clean water and sanitation for rural communities in China, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Sierra Leone, India and Ecuador — is a model in the world of sustainable development. It has programs in 4,000 schools across North America, creating a network of a million children committed to change. A staff of 120, located at offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Palo Alto, Calif., runs all this, although most are in this city.
The housing program makes sense for many reasons. It’s mainly intended for entry-level employees carrying student debt, plus the majority are female and having a safe place to live near their workplace is a valuable perk (especially reassuring to parents). It also allows Free the Children to attract talented staff from outside Canada and, lacking an endowment common to many charities its size, owning real estate is a financial buffer for Free the Children.
Dalal Al-Waheidi, the charity’s 31-year-old executive director, says, “During times of economic crisis like we’ve just been through, other organizations have laid off people or cut programs. We just sold one house.”
But perhaps most important, it creates a community that the Kielburgers realized is what young people dedicated to a cause love. Staff living in the houses volunteer at the local food bank or get involved in programs serving the children of nearby Regent Park. Living and working together can be intense so it isn’t for everyone, and most are expected to move out and get their own places after a couple of years, but it’s all part of Free the Children’s philosophy of social innovation and creating a sustainable business model at home as well as abroad.
Johnson and de Montbrun are the first Free the Children family to be living in the housing. “Our day care is three blocks away,” says de Montbrun. “Our doctor is nearby. We take the kids to the Riverdale Farm. And David can walk home at lunch to see them.”
Laughing, Johnson adds, “I don’t know if Free the Children expected someone might have kids and live in one of the houses. We’re the pioneers.”
David Hayes is an author and award-winning feature writer who has been a renter most of his life. If you have stories or information to share about renting, he can be reached at lifelong_renter@sympatico.ca.