When Free The Children moved its headquarters to the neighbourhood in 2004, we knew that it presented both challenges and opportunities that purchasing houses could solve.

Many of our employees, mostly from outside of Toronto, would need a safe and secure place to live.
We wanted to be part of our new community long after our office lights are turned off.
We believed the enthusiasm of our young, world-changing staff could make a substantial local contribution.
Owning real estate, including two residences and three medium office buildings, provides financial security to Free The Children.

There is history to this model that we're proud to share with you.

It begins in the suburbs of Thornhill, north of Toronto. That's where 12-year-old Craig Kielburger lived when he and a bunch of middle school friends founded Free The Children. It wasn't long before his parents! home had become the headquarters for young people fighting child labour and poverty overseas.

The spacious home, known as Thornbank to FTC volunteers, was soon over-crowded with school supplies and health kits meant for children in India, and later, countries in Africa. It was also crammed with young volunteers, mostly from the Toronto area, but increasingly from other parts of Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan. They needed a place to sleep.

For many years, Thornbank was both a bunkhouse and a base for Free The Children.

Eventually Craig convinced his parents to give up Thornbank to Free The Children. It didn't take a lot of arm-twisting. As older brother Marc explains, my brother convinced my parents to let him travel to Asia when he was 12. So he's pretty persuasive.

Craig's parents moved out. Their generosity initiated a model of providing living space to Free The Children volunteers that continues to this day.
In 2005, after Free The Children moved its headquarters downtown, we purchased our first house for staff. Today, we own two residences and three medium office buildings, with no plans to purchase more. Owning these homes provides security to our staff, but another type of security: financial.

We don't have an endowment, as do many charitable organizations of our scope and size. Owning real estate helps buffer us during hard times, like the recent recession. Other charities cut programs when donations dropped. We didn't. Instead, we sold one building to sustain and even increase our programs.

We've been lucky to receive targeted donations from generous supporters to buy these properties. None of the funds to purchase this real estate comes from money raised by donations for projects, or from schools or from young people, which all go exclusively to our programs, such as building schools and water sources.
The Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship hailed our housing model as unique. They liked that we took an entrepreneurial approach to managing our sustainability and growth, instead of relying on handouts.

We're proud of our housing model and happy to share it with the community where we work and live.

The legacy of Thornbank lives on.

Click here to read some news coverage about our innovative housing model.