Young People Changing the World at We Day Seattle 2017

I did­n’t get to attend this year’s We Day Seat­tle 2017 event on April 21, but it looks like it was incred­i­ble, as usu­al! The event was co-found­ed by change­mak­er Craig Kiel­burg­er, who is pro­filed in Be a Change­mak­er: How to Start Some­thing that Mat­ters, and it is all about young peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. Despite the star-stud­ded line­up, you can’t buy a tick­et to WE Day—students from across the coun­try earn their way by the actions they take on one local and one glob­al cause of their choice. WE Day is free of charge to stu­dents and edu­ca­tors, thanks to the gen­er­ous sup­port of Microsoft and The All­state Foundation.
“Every year, more than 200,000 stu­dents from over 10,000 schools around the globe earn their tick­ets to WE Day through the year­long WE Schools pro­gram, cre­at­ing pos­i­tive impacts in their com­mu­ni­ties,” says Craig. “WE Day Seat­tle will unite and cel­e­brate thou­sands of young lead­ers who are work­ing pas­sion­ate­ly for the caus­es they care about most, cre­at­ing sus­tain­able change in their own back­yards and around the world.” And it looks like it once again did just that.

As report­ed on Geek­Wire:

Write down your goals, lis­ten more, and dream big.

These are good pieces of advice for any­one, real­ly, but they held spe­cial impor­tance for more than 15,000 stu­dents who gath­ered inside an ener­getic Key Are­na on Fri­day in Seat­tle for WE Day, an annu­al event that cel­e­brates youth empowerment.

Astro­naut Buzz Aldrin told kids:

“No dream is too high,” Aldrin told the crowd. “I know because I am liv­ing proof.”

Seat­tle Sea­hawks quar­ter­back Rus­sell Wil­son, a WE Day Seat­tle co-chair, told them:

“I hope every­body in this room is writ­ing down their goals and what they want to do in life,” he said. “Once you set those goals out, go achieve them. But you can’t achieve them alone — you need to achieve them with oth­er peo­ple.” –Rus­sell Wilson

Many more stars were in atten­dance, too. What a treat for the young peo­ple in attendance!
And what a ben­e­fit to our local com­mu­ni­ties, as well. Dur­ing the 2015–2016 school year, WE Schools groups in Seat­tle vol­un­teered more than 500,000 hours for local and glob­al caus­es and raised more than $900,000 for more than 600 local orga­ni­za­tions. Since 2007, WE Schools have raised near­ly $80 mil­lion and vol­un­teered more than 27 mil­lion hours for var­i­ous causes.
Who says kids can’t change the world? It looks to me like they already are.