Young People Can Change Our World
by Michael Connolly
It is important to teach young people from an early age to empathize with human suffering. They need to know that they have the power and the responsibility to act upon their empathy in ways that will reduce and even eliminate human suffering. Creating a generation of responsible citizens is possible, and it is also necessary for us to thrive. Dr. Jonathan White (quoted in Me to We, p.168)
We have a problem. Former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, John W. Gardner identified the problem over thirty years ago. And, it’s still with us. Gardner wrote: “One of the most difficult problems we face is to make it possible for young people to participate in the great tasks of their time. We have designed our society in such a way that most of the possibilities open to young people are too bookish or frivolous.” (Self Renewal, p.126)
In other words we are denying young people the knowledge that they have the power and the responsibility to act to reduce and try to eliminate human suffering.
One Example
Speaking at Harvard University’s Commencement in 2007, Bill Gates told his audience, in words that echo those of Gardner, “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world—the appalling disparities of health, wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.” He continued:
` … humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries--
but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequality.
…reducing inequality is the highest human achievement.
Gates said that it took him decades to recognize these inequalities and to realize that he could do something to alleviate them. He challenged those listening to him to be activists, to take on those big inequalities, promising them, “It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.”
Bill Gates speech was a call to action, inviting young people to get engaged in one of the greats tasks of our times—reducing inequality and the suffering that results from it, not in twelve to sixteen years, but right now. Many adults still believe that those who have yet to complete their schooling are too undeveloped to accomplish anything of significance. They are wrong.
My wife and I have spent the past three years interviewing and writing about young people in the USA and in other countries, some of them as young as seven years old, who have made major contributions to reducing inequality and improving the lives of others. Our book, Young Enough to Change the World, answers the question: What prompts young people to empathize with human suffering and encourages them to do something to alleviate and even try to eliminate it?
What Prompts Young People to Take Action?
The answer, we found as we interviewed young people for Young Enough to Change the World, is that awareness of a need, and the recognition that someone should do something to address that need is the springboard for action. Ultimately, each of the young people in the book came to the conviction that that someone had to be them. They reached that conclusion, accepted it and acted on it. Even when their actions were small, as they often were in the beginning, those actions ultimately made the lives of others better.
One of the young people in our book (he was seven at the time) didn’t appreciate the meaning of what his mother meant when she said: “We could feed a poor family with just what you leave on your plate.” It made no send to him until he visited India and saw children his age begging in the streets and living in cardboard crates. Once the reality of what his mother was trying to teach him became visible, he began a project that eventually resulted in a foundation, Lil’ MDG’s, a foundation that has raised millions to help disadvantaged people around the world. http://lilmdgs.org/
A high school student whose story we tell felt her call to action when she witnessed young people scavenging through the Smokey Mountain dumpsite in the Philippines and had one of the young boys there tell her he’d always dreamed of becoming a doctor, but he’d probably end up being a dump truck driver because his parents couldn’t afford to send him to school. She decided to do something about that and began working with WE International the Philippines.
Another young boy felt the call to action when one of his friends was diagnosed with childhood cancer. He used his love of go-cart racing to raise thousands of dollars to help treat and hopefully to defeat childhood cancer. http://www.minismission.com/
Like adults, young people seek meaning and purpose in their lives. And as Bill Gates pointed out, helping to improve the lives of others will be one of the great experiences of a young person’s own life. Instead of restricting them to activities that are merely bookish and frivolous, let’s invite them to join us in taking on the great tasks of our time.
Mike Connolly is co-author with his wife, Brie Goolbis, of Young Enough to Change the World: Stories of Kids and Teens Who Turned Their Dreams into Action, scheduled to be released in June 2015 by Kalindi Press, an affiliate of Hohm Press. Get more information about the book at: http://michaelrconnollyjr.weebly.com