Cheryl Perera
Founder and President

Cheryl Perera is an accomplished children's rights activist, a captivating speaker and the Founder and President of OneChild, the premiere organization empowering a movement of children and youth leading the action against child sex slavery. Her extraordinary contributions to protect children have earned her honours such as the World of Children Founder's Award, and distinguished her as one of Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100, and Canada's Top 20 Under 20.

At age 16, she read about the exploitation of children for a high school project, and embarked on a fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka. Eager to get an insider's look into the child sex industry, she posed in a STING operation as the decoy – the main role of a 15 year-old child prostitute, that led to the successful apprehension of a 40 year-old child sex predator. Her breadth of knowledge and bravery attracted the attention of dignitaries, and she was recognized by the Sri Lankan Government, having been offered a placement of one year at the Presidential Secretariat to serve as the President's Nominee on Child Protection, at the age of 17.

Back in Canada, Cheryl launched a youth-driven campaign to mobilize the Canadian Travel and Tourism industry to promote child-wise tourism. At age 19, she established OneChild, and under her leadership the youth succeeded in their negotiations with Air Canada to screen their youth-produced in-flight video spot warning against child sex tourism. The project—the only one of its kind in Canada and the second in North America—has a viewership of 22 million passengers to date.

Under Cheryl's direction, OneChild has entered into major partnerships with international NGOs such as the IBCR and Plan Canada in a powerful deterrence campaign on child sex tourism; and the PREDA Foundation, completing a fundraising campaign of $185 000 to construct two rehabilitation centres and offer support services to child survivors in the Philippines. She has also traveled to many countries such as the United States, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Macedonia, Ecuador, the Philippines, Kenya, Brazil, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Switzerland, and the UK, meeting with and speaking out for the protection of children.

A sought-after dynamic orator, Cheryl has spoken to over 36,000 young people, and continues to address UN organizations, government bodies, business groups, educators, students and the media on the importance of children's rights and social action. Her work has been profiled on CNN International, CBC, Global TV, The Montel Williams Show and featured in various newspapers and magazines such as the National Post, The Financial Times of London, The Toronto Star, and Flare Magazine, and will be featured in the upcoming book, The Humanitarian Leader in Each of Us: 7 Choices that Shape a Socially Responsible Life.

Cheryl holds an Honours BA in Ethics, Society, and Law, and Political Science from the University of Toronto, and is currently pursuing an MAS in Children#39;s Rights in Switzerland. A recipient of many prestigious national and international awards, Cheryl has broken tremendous ground to turn the tables on the child exploitation industry where few would dare to tread.