14 DAY TRIAL // In two days from now, some of the world's younger artists, musicians and writers will speak at the Microsoft Campus, during the TEDxRedmond conference, which will feature over a dozen young presenters.
Some of them will perform theater and music and others will speak on several topics, including educational reform, environmental policy and inspiring creativity, while over 100 kids, mostly from Washington, have signed up for attending at the event.
Among these special kids presenting the one-day event, are three girls who started a nonprofit after a friend died of a rare form of cancer - and have to date raised $250,000, a 14-year-old mountaineer who has climbed some of the tallest summits in the world including Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kosciuszko and a 12-year-old environmental activist who has worked closely with Al Gore to raise awareness about global warming.
The organizer of this event is also a kid, 13-year-old Adora Svitak – the driving force behind this project.
“When I first began organizing this event, I thought it would be hard, as kids don’t really speak for a living, so they’re not as findable as adult speakers,” she said.
But apparently, it was not as hard as the lack of forums for kids to speak in made it much easier to find them and “as soon as we contacted them, a lot of them jumped at the opportunity,” she added.
The event was actually her idea and it came to her when she spoke at a similar event designed for adults, in February.
Her speech was entitled “What Adults Can Learn from Kids.” and after the experience, she wanted to “see a platform like that just for kids, to give other youth an opportunity to have their voices heard.”
So she proposed the all-kid conference to the TED organizers, who were receptive, and as Svitak’s father works at Microsoft, the Microsoft campus was a natural place to host the event.
Svitak started writing when she was five and published her first book at the age of seven and her writing includes poetry, fiction and historical essays.
She is also a teacher in an online classroom, where she is followed by students in countries including Canada, Dubai, Costa Rica and some rural classrooms in the United States.
Another kid who started changing the world is Alec Loors, who is now 16 years old.
Ever since he was 12 and he saw Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” he has been writing and speaking about the environment.
“When I saw it I felt this intense call that I’d never felt before,” he explains.
“Climate change will affect my generation more than anyone else and I know it sounds naïve, but I felt I needed to stop global warming in my lifetime.”
Loorz wanted to become part of Gore’s program called The Climate Project, but was rejected because he was too young, so he did what every boy would have done – started his own community awareness programs about climate change.
His success became so big that a few years later, Al Gore personally invited him to become a trainee, so today he is speaking on panels with scientists and policymakers, offering his perspective as a kind of ambassador for the youngest generation.
At the TEDx conference, he will of course discuss the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the things that kids can do for the environment.
Jordan Romero is only 14 years old but he is the youngest person to have climbed Mt. Everest.
The trip is part of his goal to climb the highest seven peaks in the world, and he is currently training for the last one, Mt. Vincent in Australia.
“The message I want to send to kids is to find their own Everest,” he says.
All of these kids were supported by their families in achieving these amazing things and there are also those had had an extra support from their schools, like Jessica Markowitz, who heard about the effects of the genocide in Rwanda, four years ago.
“After I heard there were kids who couldn’t go to school because they didn’t have parents to support them, I was really just shocked,” she explained.
So she started a nonprofit organization to help Rwandan girls who are vulnerable as a result of genocide and the first money she gathered were from her Bat Mitzvah.
Today, she has gathered nearly $25,000, has made several trips to the country with organization, IMPUHWE, and the Paul Allen Foundation has pledged to match the funds once they reach their goal.
Parents are allowed to register and attend the event on the Microsoft campus, but they will be in a different viewing area from the kids during the conference.
Adora Svitak talks about the event: