On Thursday October 2nd 2014, I got the most amazing opportunity to attend We Day 2014. It was at the ACC in Toronto and hundreds of youth were there along with some very important people, and some famous celebrities. In fact, the day was as incredible as I imagined it, that I feel so excited to share about my experience with you!!

Prologue
As I shared with you before in one of my articles about my plan to attend the event, here is a snapshot just in case you haven’t read me earlier: Last year (2013) our school did some fundraising for ‘Me to We’! We sold some Rafiki Friend Chain bracelets and gave all the funds to ‘Free the Children’! Knowing that any action used to support Me to We will earn you a free ticket to ‘Me to We’, we were privileged to get tickets!! Unfortunately, only TWELVE students were allowed to attend!! The three teachers who were coming with us, held a meeting to see who wanted to attend We Day. A LOT of students in the grade seven and eight range fled the gym!! Tough decision eh! So they decided that they would hold a competition. Everyone was to present either a paragraph or a video of why they deemed worthy to attend this yearly event. I chose to do a video, and I got selected! So that’s how my journey began!!

Off We Go
After riding the Go Train to Toronto (at 6:39am), we finally arrived at the ACC where there were hundreds of kids piling around at the front doors. A man led us to one of the doors and we got to go inside a bit early. We walked straight to our seating section, 311, and we took our seats. On every seat was a We Day tote bag!! It included some items in it like coupons and things to help us inspire CHANGE!! The biggest item was a We Day notebook. We Day was not scheduled to begin until 8:45 and we were there 40 minutes early so I decided I would read the notebook! It had all sorts of information on special Me to We trips, and quotes, and activities.

Finally, at the scheduled time, We Day begun. It started out with speeches by Mark and Craig Kielburger. Marc and Craig Kielburger are the founders of Me to We!! (Before it started, I got a high five from Craig & a selfie with Marc!!) Then there were some performances and speeches from all sorts of people throughout the performance!! Jay-Z was there!! He performed his hit single Turn It Up!! Other famous celebrities that were there included; Nelly Furtado, Shawn Desmond, James Duffey, Big Sean, Chris Hadfield (!!), R5 including Ross Lynch, and Joe Jonas. There were also some very important people there like: Queen Noor of Jordan, Irene and Joan from Kenya, Leah (Mama from Kenya), Spencer West (No legs!!), Naomi and Faith from Kenya, a girl named Ashley Murphy who has HIV, and many more!! I heard some very nice quotes and very inspiring stories. Many more celebrities than I thought each had a story about bullying!! We Day was presented in form of a classroom!! We had such criteria to a classroom;

  • Periods There were five periods.
    – Economic empoWErment
    – Technological empoWErment
    – Social empoWErment
    – Educational empoWErment
    – Take action
  • Teachers We had a celebrity be our teacher/host for each period
  • Supply Teachers We had important people take over a period
  • Homework Our homework was to go to the Me to We website and learn how we can change the world
  • A Class All the students (and teachers ;)) in the stadium were the ‘eager for knowledge’ class

Issues:
There were a LOT of issues mentioned at We Day, but there is one I would like to explain a bit about it. It’s the RAFIKI FRIEND CHAIN fundraiser. I want to focus on this campaign because it is the one I know the most about. As we (should) all know, the word Rafiki means ‘friend’ in Swahili!! One of the mamas had the opportunity to explain this during that day, it was so touching to me to listen to her for all sort of reasons. You could feel how empowered and grateful she was, so as other speakers. The Rafiki bracelets are made by mamas in Kenya. They are VERY beautiful Rafiki chains and there are even more Rafiki products!! Every Rafiki bracelet you buy, goes to the mamas so they can use it to: earn a living, send their children to school and show the world the magic of their skills and traditions. By earning a fair wage for her work, a mama is empowered to become a leader in her community and make decisions that support her family. One bracelet is $10.

There are many more campaigns that you could look at on the Free The Children website!!

I will now end with the quotes that I heard on We Day:

“When you believe you can make the world better, you can!!” – Craig Kielburger

“Do not wait for the perfect moment, make this moment perfect” – Unknown

Indeed that day was one of my best days ever and I am as inspired and looking forward to be part of the change vibe!

Venus Wambura