Monday, October 24, 2011

Be the Change

David asked to go to school early today. Like dark and very early.  He wanted to be at school at 7:30am - a full hour and a quarter before necessary.  He and his friends had brokered their early entry with the Principal so that they could work on their first WE day project - a bulletin board of information for their fellow students.

A couple of weeks ago David was lucky enough to be one of a few kids from his school that attended the Free the Children Vancouver "Me to We" day at Rogers Arena.  There were 18,000 students there to learn about world issues affecting children. 

Free The Children was founded by 12-year-old Craig Kielburger in 1995 when he gathered 11 school friends to begin fighting child labour. Today, Free The Children is the world's largest network of children helping children through education, with more than one million young people involved in our programs in 45 countries
Free the Children

It would be impossible not to be moved by the line-up of speakers at "Me to We" day including Mia Farrow, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Kielburger brothers and Shaq as well as bands and dancers and people who have worked with "Free the Children" all over the world including Robin Wiszowaty who wrote "My Maasai Life" which Lindsay, David and I all read earlier this year.

It was intended to inspire children to help other children and David and his friends were very inspired and motivated to do their part - to be their piece of the global puzzle. They have lots of ideas and lots of energy and I am sure with some guidance from their teachers they will come up with a worthy campaign.

This is more than the 3 R's of school - this is more than David ever had before, this is life-long impactful social justice that a child as privileged as him should be part of.  This is teachers on job action?

Just another reason to be grateful for his new school and his renewed sense of himself and his place in the world.

I look forward to championing the Homma Elementary "Me to We" Campaign , whatever it turns out to be!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Disrupted

It's been a CoVID while since I was in this space.  I'm here today to muse about disruption.  I am feeling disrupted.  I don&#...