NRI Entrepreneur Firdaus Kharas receives
one of Canada’s top honors

Los Angeles, Dec 29, 2023
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

NRI Firdaus Kharas Chairman and Executive Producer, Chocolate Moose Media Master of Arts, International Affairs, a visionary entrepreneur, has been appointed as an officer of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors, in recognition of his impactful contributions to advancing social change through human-centered media. The annual list of appointees to the Order of Canada for 2023 was unveiled by Governor General of Canada Mary Simon on Thursday. This esteemed order acknowledges individuals from diverse sectors who have demonstrated exceptional and sustained contributions to the betterment of Canada.

Kharas, 68, has earned the title of officer of the Order of Canada for his outstanding work in advancing social change through human-centered media as a social entrepreneur, humanitarian, and producer of mass communications media. Expressing gratitude for the honor, Kharas remarked on the significance of the recognition, especially as an immigrant.

He highlighted the Parsi community’s small size in Canada, numbering only 3,600, making the acknowledgment particularly meaningful. Kharas, the founder of Chocolate Moose Media in 1995, a social enterprise focused on creating mass communications for the betterment of humanity, has garnered global recognition for his impactful work, reaching over a billion people. He has received 125 awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award, and holds several honorary doctorates from universities. The investiture ceremony for appointees will take place at a later date, with details to be announced in due course.

About Firdaus Kharas
Chairman & Executive Producer - Chocolate Moose Media Inc

• When the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations identify an intractable communication problem somewhere in the world, they frequently call Firdaus Kharas. His approach to urgent, sometimes deadly crises is deceptively simple: he creates animated public service announcements and videos that resonate with people across cultures.
• Mr. Kharas’ most famous campaign is “The Three Amigos”, which features three animated condoms discussing HIV prevention. It was introduced on South African television channels during the height of the AIDS crisis in 2005. Condom sales more than tripled and Mr. Kharas was credited with saving 18,000 lives in a year as a result.
• After spending his childhood in Calcutta, Mr. Kharas attended high school in Pennsylvania as an exchange student.
• He stayed in the U.S. for his undergraduate studies and considered attending Harvard for a master’s degree in international affairs. But John Sigler, a former director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, convinced him to come to Carleton in 1979. “It was a very brief conversation,” recalls Mr. Kharas. “He offered me a full scholarship and that changed the course of my life. I became Canadian.”
• Mr. Kharas went on to study marketing and law at the University of Ottawa, management at Harvard University and social innovation at Stanford University.
• He headed the United Nations Association and spent six years in the Canadian public service—both in foreign affairs and with the Immi­gration and Refugee Board of Canada—before leaving in 1995 to create Chocolate Moose Media.

Mr. Kharas’ company’s first campaign was for UNICEF, in which UNICEF animated each part of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child using studios all over the world. He recognized there was a need to not just educate people, but change their behaviour.

“I don’t believe in bashing people on the head with information,” he says. “My approach with animation is that it’s funny, it’s viewed repeatedly and people internalize the message and come to their own conclusions.”
Mr. Kharas’ most recent project involves creating animated shorts about the teenagers who are among the 600,000 Colombian refugees living in Ecuador.