A 7-Year Old Trying to Save the World

—

So last August 12 I get this message in my Facebook Inbox :

As a quick background, Noey is the 7-year old daughter of a good friend, Ina Silva.

As I looked at her message, I immediately said to myself, “How can I resist such an invitation?”. And so without a shred of hesitation I RSVP’d “YES” to this appointment. Reese reads the message, gushes, and immediately says that come hell or high water she would also join.

And so on August 15 we have a meeting with this 7-year-old Earthsaver.

Lo and behold, she had actually prepared a Powerpoint (!) According to Ina, Noey had put it all together by herself, even using photoshop for some of the images. It actually got me wondering, what was I able to do when I was her age??

The powerpoint is absolutely priceless! And so just to share with the world, here it is :

Now, please go back again to Slide #3. Under “What It Will Look Like”, the second line reads “I will draw it on the board”.

And so Noey then literally proceeds to draw her mock-up website on a blackboard that she had diligently prepared :

We were floored speechless.

—

Before our meeting with Noey, I drove (4) hours from Batangas (aggravated by unreasonable traffic in SLEX) to bring social enterprise students to Hapinoy. I had been awake since 5 am, relatively exhausted, and almost cranky.

But Noey’s personality and presentation absolutely energized me.

This is who I hope the future generation will look like, ladies and gentlemen :

Earthsavers who are starting young (all of 7 years old!); technologically-savvy (facebook-user, photoshopped powerpoint presentation); collaborative (invited stakeholders to brainstorm); excellent skills of selling and persuasion; and most importantly, the right heart and attitude (it’s almost impossible not to love “I want to make this website because I want to help recycle and I want to help save trees and the world.”)

If we can figure out a way to raise our children to be like Noey, we just might wake up to a brighter world.

—

postscript : so watch out for Noey’s website! I think the plan is to launch it this December

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under A Better World, Education 2.0, Philippines 2020. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.