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2005 Top 20
Under 20 Award Recipients
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 Shamin
Jr. Mohamed, 16
Toronto, Ontario
Volunteerism has always come easy to Shamin Jr. Mohamed. For the
past two years, Shamin Jr. has organized World Vision's 30 hour
famine at his local high school which has raised close to $10,000.
He is currently planning the third annual for this event.
His experience with the famine relief fundraiser and a born
ability to lead has led to Shamin Jr. starting the Children's AIDS
Health Program,
http://LetsStopAIDS.org, a registered charity to engage fellow teens in
helping the plight of kids with aids around the world. Their long
term goal is to build a health care centre in third world
countries specializing in AIDS for children.
Shamin Jr. has a mature view of leadership - "Being a leader
doesn't always make you right - it simply gives you the
opportunity to make decisions that will benefit the whole group"
In 2003, Shamin Jr. was awarded the DAREarts Leadership Award
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 Cheryl Perera, 19
Richmond Hill, Ontario
After seeing the images of suffering children around the world,
especially the sexual exploitation of young children, Cheryl
Perera grew angry and realized that she needed to do what she
could to combat this growing problem.
At age 17, Cheryl traveled to Sri Lanka for 3.5 months to conduct
research on child exploitation. She interviewed child prostitutes,
soldiers, and laborers and caught their images and stories on
tape. She met with several government officials, including the
Minister of Mass communications and the Advisor to the President
of Sri Lanka on Social Infrastructure, to discuss the plight of
children, and youth taking action.
Wanting to truly understand the lives of children in the child sex
trade, she volunteered to act as a decoy in a undercover operation
that yielded a successful arrest of a 40 year old pedophile. Her
experience in Sri Lanka was life altering.
In addition to her work in Sri Lanka, she is also a board member
of CASE - Canadians Addressing Sexual Exploitation. She has spoken
to over 20,000 individuals through countless speaking engagements,
raised over $10,000 for FTC programs and has logged over 6000
hours of community service.
Cheryl is now the director of a youth-run initiative designed to
mobilize the travel and tourism Industry in Canada to take action
against child sex tourism.
In 2004, she was the recipient of the Cinram International
Scholarship Award for exemplary involvement in the community.
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 Florind
Polo, 15
Toronto, Ontario
Florind Polo continued his commitment to volunteerism when he
moved from Albania to Canada at the age of 11. In Albania he
organized a student run initiative to raise awareness and speak
out against violence of children and human right violations. Upon
arriving in Canada, he linked this organization with student
activists in Toronto.
Florind has shown great commitment and leadership for this cause
by investing $2,000 of his own money to travel back to Albania to
expand the program in Albania.
Since his arrival to Canada, Florind founded a Free the Children
chapter in Weston Ontario and is the Founding chair of the Amnesty
International Committee. This committee regularly organizes
fundraising events to support local area charities.
Through Florind's leadership, he has raised money for the United
Way and the Tsunami Relief Fund and is also one of the founders of
the Children's Program in Africa for Education.In addition to
Top 20 Under 20, Florind has received the 2003 Ontario Principals'
Council Award for Student Leadership, the W.L. Gordon James 25
Year Club Scholarship as well as the Weston Lion's Club Award for
2004 & 2005.
His career aspiration is to be a International Lawyer with the
United Nations. |
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 Gabriel
Rodrigue, 16
Rimouski, Québec
At age 13, Gabriel launched his own company, Voltige multimédia,
specialized in Internet marketing solutions. Today, he teams up
with freelancers to offer comprehensive interactive communications
services, including Web site creation, and promotional and
corporate CD/DVD production, to local businesses. Voltige
multimédia's clientele is not restricted to his hometown Rimouski.
Clients are from everywhere - from Quebec to British Columbia and
England.
For a year now, our young innovator has been hosting a weekly
chronicle on new technologies on a local radio station.
In school, Gabriel attends a special program aiming at self
improvement through volunteerism and apprenticeship of three
languages. He volunteers on the election committee and is in
charge of the composition of a student newsletter.
Gabriel's entrepreneurial acumen did not go unnoticed. At age 14,
he won the local and regional chapters of the Concours québécois
en entrepreneurship contest, and was one of the finalists at the
national level. |
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