From me to we, students from Lampman and Grade 7 students at Hillcrest School in Estevan returned exhilarated from their trip to the We Day conference in Saskatoon last week.
The conference was organized by Free the Children, an organization founded by brothers Marc and Craig Kielburger, in order to bring young people together to hear inspiring stories and empower them to create change in their communities.
The conference was held Feb. 27 at Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon, and Hillcrest student Morgan Barnard said she was particularly impressed by Molly Burke, one of the speakers at the conference who is visually impaired.
"She spoke about how she was bullied when she was 14," said Barnard. "I was just so inspired by the speech that I wanted to learn more about her, so I looked her up on the We Day site. She said that we all have a voice and that we should use it."
Burke was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when she was four years old, and her vision has been declining steadily ever since.
Grade 7 teacher Cat Costa said the class got very involved in the community leading up to the conference. Not everybody gets to go to We Day. Students have to earn their attendance at the conference, and the class completed a can and bottle fundraiser leading up to the event.
"In some ways, I see this as the climax of all of the fundraising that has happened from October until now," said Costa. "In the opposite way, it will be interesting to see where students go from here."
Hillcrest School is now collecting pennies, fundraising for a clean-water initiative. Each student received a bag when they attended the conference and they are meant to be used for the We Create Change campaign.
When the bags are filled with $25 worth of pennies, they are taken to the bank and the funds are forwarded to Free the Children. The money is intended to give someone who doesn't have clean drinking water a life's worth of it.
The Grade 7 class had about three bags filled last week, and each of the other classrooms is collecting pennies as well.
Lampman Grade 11 student Elusha Baird and Grade 12 student Taylor Roy also attended We Day, along with 15 others from the school.
Baird noted they heard from actors like Mia Farrow and Martin Sheen, who spoke at the conference about their views on social injustice.
"It was really interesting to hear them speak about how they see the world," said Elusha. "Hearing them talk about how we're the next generation and that we're the ones who have to choose to do something about our future in life, it was really inspiring."
For some, just being immersed in the crowd of 15,000 excited people was an experience itself.
"After three months, all of a sudden we're right in this room with 15,000 people. It seemed so far away but then we're there," said Jarod Buick, a Grade 7 student at Hillcrest.
"It was cool to see all of these kids there who wanted to learn and wanted to know more," Taylor added. "It definitely put a new perspective on everything about being more conscious of how much we spend and how much water we use. We take so many things for granted like education and water."
Taylor took a vow of silence by herself in November 2011, raising more than $2,000 for Free the Children.
The Grade 7 Hillcrest class can opt in to the We are Silent day on April 18 as young people around the world take a vow of silence in order to raise awareness and funds for children around the world who are being silenced by the denial of basic human rights. Costa said she will be silent that day, and the students who wish to join may do so as well.
Elusha quoted Sheen who said, "'We are dreaming things that never were, and saying, why not?' That quote really hit me because he believes we're doing things that people never even dreamed of."
She noted students at Lampman also took part in the 30-hour famine on March 1, going until 6 a.m. the following morning.
