In “Be A Changemaker” by Laurie Ann Thompson, Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka, an organization that finds and supports changemakers, writes, “If you change your world in middle or high school, you will change it again and again throughout your life.” This book provides several stories of young people who created positive impact in middle or high school. Eleven-year-old Jessica Markowitz heard about the fact that girls in Rwanda were often prevented from going to school and formed the organization Richard’s Rwanda that to date had raised $130,000 to help girls in Rwanda.
Nine-year-old Martha Payne from Argyl, Scotland wrote a blog about her school lunches which quickly gained fifty thousand readers a day. She decided to put it to work doing good. Within a year she raised over $200,000.00 and built an entire kitchen in Lirangwe, Malawi, Africa.
Twelve-year-old Craig Kielburger of Ontario, Canada read an article about the fact that “250 million children were working around the world, many in slave-like conditions.” He asked if any of his classmates would help him do something about that and eleven of his friends agreed to help. Together they created a group called Free the Children. Since 1995 Free the Children has provided medical supplies worth more than $16 million around the world, constructed more than 650 schools and schoolrooms and much more.
“Real Kids, Real Stories, Real Change” and “Real Kids, Real Stories, Real Character” by Garth Sundem tell of over sixty young people from around the world who had significant positive impact. Eight-year-old Omar Gallegos walked 800 miles to a rain forest in Mexico to protest that 50,000 species a year that were becoming extinct as the rain forest was destroyed. His crusade led to a meeting with the President of Mexico who was convinced to save the rain forest.
When Alexandra Scott was four and fighting childhood cancer, she opened a lemonade stand in order to raise money to help doctors pay for cancer research. She set a goal to raise one million dollars. When she died at the age of eight the lemonade stands that had been created raised close to $1.5 million dollars.
Sixteen-year-old Kevin Curwick was concerned about the Twitter cyber bullying in his town in Minnesota. His idea to combat that was to create a Twitter account and start tweeting nice things that were happening in his town. Within a week all the negative Twitter accounts were shut down. When students came back from summer break the next year the whole school had been transformed into a much more positive, less exclusionary place.
“Teenage Rebels” by Dawson Barrett, tells a history of students who in many cases put their lives on the line in order to create change. The book starts with the story of sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington who rode through the night to spread the word about the need for assistance for colonial troops who had been attacked in Danbury, Connecticut. Her ride through the night covered roughly double the miles of Paul Revere’s famous ride. Fast forward to the present. Student protests in Portland Oregon led to a new contract for teachers after eight months of an impasse; dozens of actions by young people in Honolulu Hawaii and other cities are also described.
“Kids Who Are Changing The World” by Anne Jankeliowitch tells the stories of forty-five kids who made the world a better place, including nine-year-old Felix Finkbeiner in Germany who wanted to lessen the amount of carbon dioxide in the world by planting trees. His efforts led to four million trees being planted around the world.
Courtney E. Martin’s book “Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists” provides very compelling real-life examples of positive impact that is being made by those under thirty-five. The author writes about eight individuals and the changes they are making. The stories are quite different regarding the details of each act of activism since she is telling the true stories of a peace activist, prison reentry social worker, veterans’ activist, filmmaker, radical philanthropist and others. Because of the diversity of individuals under thirty-five who are honored, each story is a deep learning experience.
I am very lucky to be able to provide personal examples of individuals over fifty who are having a very positive impact. I have offered a workshop to hundreds of individuals over the last ten years titled Making the Most of Your 2nd Fifty Years. There is a free copy of the power point deck and user guide that I use in that program available on here. You do not need to provide any contact information; just download it if you are interested in seeing and/or using some of the content in it. I do not need attribution.
In that program I met a ninety-three-year-old woman who is still working part-time as an education consultant and has taken on as her cause helping individuals who are her age and older deal with the aging process. I met another woman in her eighties who had to go to a shelter when a hurricane knocked out the electricity in her town. When the lights went back on in her home and she could have left the shelter, she said she wanted to stay because she was having a good time even though she was sleeping on a cot. Her personality had a positive impact on me and everyone in the course.
One person in her fifties had begun doing stand-up comedy to help people deal with the negativity that surrounds them, another had become a dancer in her sixties to create positive energy for herself and others, and others in their eighties and nineties were doing part-time paid or volunteer work in residences where they lived, for nonprofit agencies etc. I heard the story from one of the class members of a friend of hers who is one-hundred-four years old who puts on sheer stockings every day because “You never know when a gentleman caller will appear.” She explained that person has a positive impact on everyone she meets because of that attitude.
My point? I have seen first-hand the positive impact that can occur by the actions of anybody at any age through the work they do and the person who they are. If you doubt that point just think of eight-year-old Omar in Mexico, eleven-year-old Jessica in Rwanda, nine-year-old Felix in Germany, twelve-year-old Craig in Canada, nine-year-old Martha in Scotland, four-year-old Alexandra in the U.S.A. and the hundreds of other regular people who made the impossible happen.
There is a section titled Learning About Positive Impact By Listening to Global Youth in my book “Have a Positive Impact During Uncertain Times” – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732793808 – that speaks to the positive impact of these types of actions. Every book mentioned in this article is cited in my book and I am excited to have heard from some readers that they are purchasing “Have a Positive Impact During Uncertain Times” for their children and grandchildren. As I have mentioned in previous posts, a link in the book allows readers of all ages to submit their positive impact success story to be posted on my website or in a follow-up “Positive Impact Success Stories” book. I received the first positive impact success story last week which will be posted on my site in a few days.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius power and magic in it. Begin it now.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe