March 27 was a fantastic day in history: March Madness was born in 1939, Thomas Jefferson was elected into the Continental Congress in 1775 and Japanese cherry trees were planted along the Potomac in 1912. However, in Seattle in 2013, We Day was held for the first time in the United States.
At 8 in the morning, elementary-, middle- and high school-aged kids from around the country flocked to KeyArena to see musicians, celebrities and motivational speakers on stage. We Day is more than a one-day event; it is a movement spread by young people that we can make a difference in the world.
We Day is orchestrated by Free the Children, a global organization started by Craig Kielburger, who started Free the Children when he was just 12 years old. He was inspired by a story he read in the newspaper about a boy named Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani child sold to a carpet-looming factory when he was only 4 years old. The price of his life: $12. He worked countless hours in the factory, tying knot after knot to pay off a debt his parents owed.
When Iqbal was 10, he escaped from the factory and began to speak out against the injustices of child labor. But on Easter Sunday in 1995, when Iqbal was riding his bike with his cousins, he was fatally shot by the owners of the carpet factory.
Kielburger was astounded that a boy the same age as him could be so brave and meet such a tragic end. He rallied 11 other classmates in his seventh-grade class to begin an organization, Free the Children. This organization continues to spread Iqbal’s message and is fighting child slavery by building schools, so children can go to school rather than work all day in a factory.
Despite the noteworthy cause, Free the Children faced many obstacles at first. When they first started up, no one took a group of seventh-grade students, passionate about making a difference, seriously. However, Kielburger’s charisma and enthusiasm drove the organization from a small group of students to the hundreds of thousands of workers it has today.
This story is what We Day is all about: young people making a difference. When Free the Children was just starting, it was driven by young people. It is important for us children and teens to know that we are never too young to create something great. We are not just leaders of tomorrow but leaders of today. Our actions, big or small, can make a difference in someone else’s life, whether or not we know it.
Speaking out
When I first heard about We Day, I was sitting around a cafeteria table on a Thursday morning for our weekly Social Justice committee meeting. When I looked up the We Day video at home, I knew that this event would probably change my perspective about life. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
I was most looking forward to seeing the Kid President speak. I had watched a lot of his videos beforehand, and if you do not know who I am talking about…he was a tiny presence on stage, but he had a lot of heart, which he shared with the 15,000 people in the KeyArena.
Even though he was probably scared to speak to such a large crowd, he still spoke, and when he was on stage, the applause was so loud that it was difficult to hear him over the screams of the audience.
My favorite speaker at We Day, though, was Spencer West. He was born with a genetic disease in which he could not move his legs, so he had his legs amputated at age 2. At age 5, he abandoned prosthetics, and the doctors said that he would never be able to walk or sit up by himself, and that he probably would never be a functioning member of society. But West proved them wrong.
In high school, he participated in cheerleading, and after he graduated from college, he traveled with his friends to Africa to help build schools.
In summer 2012, he even climbed the tallest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, on his hands. Needless to say, West has redefined what is possible.
Another highlight of my We Day experience was a speaker named J.R. Martinez, a U.S. Army veteran who suffers from severe facial injuries. After Martinez’s surgery, he went to the supermarket. A boy was staring at him as he was looking at the soup, and he said, “Man, you don’t look normal.” Martinez looked at the boy and said, “Well, that’s funny, because I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Later, the boy apologized, but he probably learned an important lesson: There is no such thing as normal. Each person has different perceptions, and what one person thinks is right may be completely different than what another person thinks is right or “normal.”
Another speaker who stood out to me was Liz Murray, bestselling author and journalist. She grew up with two loving parents who, in her words, happened to be addicted to drugs. She does not harbor any hatred toward her parents for selling their furniture, clothes and food to feed their addiction because she sincerely believes that they were sick and needed help.
After her parents died in her teenage years, she realized that they had dreams for themselves, too, and that she could not let her dreams go to waste. Even though she was on the streets, she still managed to get straight A’s and eventually got a full-ride scholarship to Harvard.
Murray is especially inspirational to me because she is a model of perseverance and stamina, even through all her obstacles. She was born into one of the most difficult situations, but she still managed to make the best of it through her motivation and her positive outlook on life.
Taking action
However, the best part of We Day did not even happen inside of the arena.
On the way back to school, a school bus filled with middle-schoolers was stopped on Mercer Street, right by where many homeless people like to hang out with their signs.
When the bus was waiting for a red light to turn green, a boy put the window down and handed a $5 bill to the homeless man. The man was grateful and put it in his pocket, but as he looked up, more and more kids were handing him money.
The smile on the homeless man’s face was a mark of gratitude for all the money he had received from a school bus full of middle-schoolers.
I think that this is the most important thing of all: to take action on what we feel is right. The homeless person probably did not expect young people to be so generous, but they proceeded to give him money despite the fact that they were middle-schoolers.
The greatest lesson I learned at We Day is that young people have the right to make a difference in the world as much as adults do and that young people will make a difference in the world despite the fact that no one expects them to. When we feel passionate about a cause, nothing — especially not age — should stop us from standing up for it.
KELLY TAFT lives in Magnolia and attended Our Lady of Fatima. She is now a junior at Holy Names Academy. To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
