“I don’t know everything—I’m just a kid—but I do know this: It’s everybody’s duty to give the world a reason to dance.”
Kid President
Blog written by Chris Boeskool, STARS Educational Specialist
People are connected like never before. We are linked together with bonds of technology and smart phones and internet…. A building collapses on the other side of the world, and within minutes we have heard about it. Bombs go off in Boston, and very shortly we are watching the explosions take place from 20 different angles. Three young women and a little child are freed from a horrific prison, and by the end of the day our cell phones have pictures of their faces, the faces of their captor, as well as the face of the man who set them free. With this constant stream of information, it can sometimes feel like one tragedy after another….
But the internet brings us more than pictures of tragedies. It can bring us things that make us laugh and cry and think…. Most importantly, it can bring us together. This past year, one of the things that has brought us together has been the Kid President videos on Soul Pancake’s YouTube channel. Most of us were introduced to Kid President by the viral “A Pep Talk from Kid President to You.” We laughed and we cried as this sweet kid challenged us all (even though it can be really hard) to take “the road that leads to awesome,” and he asked us the hard questions like, “What will be your Space Jam? What will you create that will make the world more awesome?” So when we heard that the folks over at Kid President wanted to hear about what people were doing to make the world more awesome, we here at Kids On The Block jumped at the chance. Here is the video we made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tsHJCaiLY
At Kids On The Block, just as in all of the programs of STARS (Students Taking A Right Stand), we are working every day to help kids find their road that leads to awesome. We have been energized by the spirit and the optimism of Kid President. Even when we are constantly bombarded by news of something else going horribly wrong, we are inspired to see the good. We see the people coming together to pull people out of the wreckage of a building, we see people running toward the explosions to help, and, when we see stories like these three women being held captive, we choose to focus on all of the heroes instead of on a few villains. We are bound together by the internet. We can allow this bond to make us more fearful, or we can use this bond to bring us closer together—Not just to entertain, but to inspire and encourage and spark something as beautiful as Hope.
We do all need a pep talk sometimes. All of us, regardless of what we do, need to be working to give the world a reason to dance. We each need to discover what our Space Jam will be. We need to help people—kids and adults—find their path that leads to awesome. This is what we are working to accomplish every day here at Kids On The Block and STARS. We are in the schools, encouraging kids to help someone out who is being bullied, inspiring kids to get to know people who are different than them, and teaching kids about what child abuse is, and letting them know that it is NEVER a kid’s fault. We hope you are inspired by the work that we do and stay tuned as we prepare to launch our campaign helping kids be more awesome!
In the words of Kid President, “We’ve got work to do. We can cry about it, or we can dance about it.”
