Photographs by William Taufic.
In 2010 Jack Kelley, a writer, and his wife, Jacki, Global CEO of the media agency Universal McCann, decided to take their second grader, Ashley, to Kenya. There, they and other UM employees helped build a school with Free the Children (FTC), a Canadian-based charity. Jack says, “That trip changed our lives, especially Ashley’s.” 
“We decided to do everything we could to introduce the charity into the United States and, particularly, New Canaan,” says Jack, who moved here with his family from Northern Virginia in 2006. “We invited Craig Kielburger, the co-founder, to speak in town and soon after started the New Canaan High School FTC chapter.” St. Luke’s, Saxe Middle School, South Elementary (Ashley’s school) and St. Ann School in Bridgeport followed. Three of those FTC clubs traveled overseas to build schools last summer, and a 60 Minutes crew filmed a segment with the St. Ann’s group in Kenya.
“We invited other inspirational speakers to town, including Spencer West, who had his legs amputated as a child but climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro earlier this year. We held leadership seminars, volunteered at a soup kitchen, held food drives for local shelters, and took a group of thirty to ‘We Day’ in Toronto,” says Jack. At these events (FTC will hold eight in Canada this school year), over 20,000 students pack into sports arenas, where role models from Al Gore to the Dalai Lama “encourage them to become ‘shameless idealists.’”
Jack emphasizes that Ashley helped him set up FTC clubs (while Jacki pursued corporate sponsors). Kids play a key role in FTC; it’s a student-driven charity. Jack, who has stepped back to a behind-the-scenes support role, knows this model works. “I started church youth groups when I was young,” he says. “One grew from eight to 420 students in six months.”
FTC has built 650 schools in forty-five countries, and ninety-one cents of every dollar raised goes to the cause. Thousands of kids have benefitted, including the volunteers. Jack describes what it was like for them building a school: “Some smiled, others cried and a few said they had never felt more alive as they did when watching or interacting with the Kenyan students attending classes in their new school for the first time.”
FTC’s Craig Kielburger comments, “Jack has stood out among our supporters as an individual who has gone above and beyond in creating environments in which young people feel safe, supported and encouraged to create a world that they can believe in.”
Jack concludes, “I always tell people, ‘Be naïve enough to change the world and you will.’”