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Students listened to Hannah Alper, a sixth-grade speaker from Meto We, the educational arm of Free the Children, which seeks to educate and empower students to make a difference in their world, so that children in developing countries can be free of poverty and child labor.
Her message to the children focused on the equation: issue + gift = change. Namely, students find an issue they care about and want to learn about, use their gifts (speaking, writing, helping others, baking, running, even donating hair), and they bring about change.
Alper emphasized that change does not have to be expensive or involve money, that even small actions (shoveling an elderly neighbor's driveway, for instance) can be important, and you never know how big the impact your action will have.
The second speaker was Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, of Prospect Park, N.J., who has traveled to Aleppo, Syria, five times and is going again in July to provide education, medical supplies and relief to refugee children of the civil war in Syria.
In addition, the children chose a workshop of special interest to them in which they learned about an issue and took an action to help others.
The workshops were coordinated by Sheila St. Onge. There were also many fundraisers during lunch time, including a bake sale, Alex's Lemonade Stand (for childhood cancer research), selling fair trade woven bracelets from Guatemala for earthquake relief in Nepal, and lollipops for Heifer International.
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