TORONTO—At eight years old, Bilaal Rajan is doing his part to help the world. On December 27, the day after the disaster in Asia, the Toronto boy launched the “Canada Kids Earthquake Challenge”. He encouraged every child in Canada to raise $100 for UNICEF to help the victims of the tsunami. His goal was to collect a total of $1 million. A pretty ambitious project, no? Not for Rajan. He has since more than doubled his goal, raising $2.5 million.

“I encourage all children to take up the challenge. Why can’t all the children around the world have everything that we do here and that we take for granted?” Rajan explained.

This is not the first time that Rajan has contributed to helping disaster victims. When he was four years old, following an earthquake in India, he went door-to-door with his grandfather selling oranges. He also collected $6000 for Haitians by selling biscuits.

Now the young boy of Indian origin is on a tour of the tsunami-affected countries. He is visiting Thailand, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. He has been stopping at cities and villages, as well as touring elementary schools.

One such stop was at a school by the beach in Patong, Thailand, where many of the children had lost family members in the tsunami. Instead of speaking about their grief, however, they mostly expressed their curiosity to Rajan.

“What is the snow like?” one boy asked.

After talking with them for a while, Rajan pulled out a toy and gave it to the children.

“That makes me happy,” he says, “to see kids playing.”