Firdaus Kharas
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, named one of the World’s 50 Most Talented Social Innovators and awarded the prestigious Peabody Award among 112 other awards, Firdaus Kharas—social innovator, author, speaker, media creator and humanitarian—founded social enterprise Chocolate Moose Media in 1995 to create human-centered mass communications. Over a billion people in 198 countries via 406 languages versions have seen his work. A global leader in using animation for social change on a wide range of topics—human rights, disease prevention, health, refugees, violence reduction and nature—he has created, directed and adapted 4,300 animated behavior change shorts (anyone may view/download 3,700 animated shorts from his Vimeo channel). Author of the book Creativity: The Key to a Remarkable Life, Firdaus has been described as "ground breaking" (Africa Film & TV), "remarkably cross-cultural" (The Globe and Mail), and "one of the richest veins of culture" (The New York Times), and is the subject of a TV documentary, Firdaus Kharas: the Animated Activist (Chispa Productions). Among others, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu strongly and publicly supports his work. Previously, he was a senior executive dealing with refugees in the Government of Canada and headed the United Nations Association in Canada. In addition to honorary doctorates, Firdaus has nine degrees and certificates from eight universities, including Carleton, Harvard, London School of Economics and Stanford.
