Let's travel back in time to the spring of 2007. Tyler Page of Brentwood, California, is watching The Oprah Winfrey Show with his mom, Laura. Tyler's 9-year-old heart is broken by a story about children being sold as slaves to fishermen by their families for as little as $20, to work 14 hours on one small meal a day, catching sometimes fatal infections from water-borne illnesses when they cut their feet on rocks, or being forced to swim deep underwater into cracks and crevices where adults won't fit, where they would sometimes get stuck and drown from getting tangled up in their fishing nets.

Tyler learned that $240 would free one of these children for a year, so he held a car wash to raise that amount. Instead, he raised enough to free five children, and, as with all of our Peace Fund Radio Heroes of the Week, Tyler could not stop. Eight months and various car washes and bake sales and yard sales and other fundraisers later, Tyler had raised $50,000. A year later, $150,000. He was raising so much money, in fact, that he and Laura founded their own organization called Kids Helping Kids.  Their fundraising totals now exceed $350,000. 

In addition to helping children in Ghana, they have given supplies and aid to young victims of natural disasters, assisted families whose children incur major medical expenses, and provided many other services to those in need in their own community and beyond. Tyler has even worked with intergovernmental agencies in Ghana to fund rescue missions to free children from slavery, once again using money he started raising when he was only 9 years old.  

He is 18 years old now, and will be attending college in the Fall. And as for the future, he says, "Kids Helping Kids is something I want to pass down to my kids and their kids. I want to leave a legacy of hope, encouragement and change." 
For the children he has protected, for the children he has educated, for the children he has aided, and for all of the children he has inspired and will inspire to do the same, Tyler Page joins the ranks of our Peace Fund Radio Heroes of the Week.