This is a pretty amazing story. 12 year old Bilaal Rajan has been going barefoot all this week as part of National Volunteer Week. Why? To bring awareness to and better understand the plight of children in underdeveloped countries, which he has named the Barefoot Challenge.

Children in these countries walk miles in their bare feet every day to fetch water, work on their farm lands, go to school, or perform other chores. For many of them, the first priority is to take care of their families.

This video explains more about what Bilaal is doing, please take a minute and watch it:

I have never heard of a child like Bilaal Rajan, who lives in Toronto, Canada. On his Hands for Help website, I learned that at the age of four-FOUR YEARS OLD-he went door-to-door selling clementines and raised $350 to help the 2001 earthquake victims in Gujarat, India. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that! He must have some amazing parents to understand the concepts of fundraising and helping others at FOUR.

Bilaal didn’t stop there, either. After a hurricane ravaged Haiti in 2004, he asked his father’s company to donate boxes of cookies which he sold during school recess, enlisting the help of 12 other kids to help with sales. Keep in mind, he would have been SEVEN in 2004. That October, Bilaal presented UNICEF with a check for $6,387 to help with the Haiti relief fund.

I encourage you to visit www.makingchangenow and www.handsforhelp.org to learn more about this amazing young man. You can order his book “Making Change” (yes, at 12 he has published a book that explains how children can become leaders and make a difference!) and learn more about his work with UNICEF, the events he has organized, the world leaders he has met with to discuss his causes. TWELVE years old, people. I think there’s hope for the future after all.