3

Tweet

Our To-Do List

Hello youth!

Not too long ago, I was fortunate enough to interview a singer/songwriter/environmentalist named Hayley Sales, and she gave me some of the most important advice I’ve ever received. To sum it up: you can’t solve apathy by force. You can’t make people care. You can only show them that you care, and hope that they’ll join in the ride.

So this is what I’m going to write for you. It isn’t a long, wordy piece on why you have to care about the planet and about others. It’s an honest explanation of why I care.

My name is Emily Chan and I’ve grown up my whole life in the picture of suburbia. I live in a nice home. I have a loving family. I’ve gone to nice schools and met amazing friends. I’ll be entering my final year at Riverside Secondary in September.

I’ve been lucky enough in the past 17 years to get to travel a lot. I’ve seen many places where life is very different than in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. It’s instilled in me both a great appreciation for culture and diversity, and an understanding of the disparities that exist in this world.

Volunteering is also a huge part of my life. I organized my first fundraiser when I was 12, and the tsunami hit Southeast Asia. Since then, taking part in both local and global initiatives has become very important to me. Two of my closest friends and I organize an annual youth basketball tournament for a local non-profit organization called ACT II Child and Family Services. Next year, I will be co-leading Riverside’s Rapid Change Club, which works closely with Free the Children. I also am a writer for Free the Children’s Global Voices program.

Volunteering and taking action have always given me a chance to feel part of something bigger than I will ever be on my own. In my opinion, there is nothing greater than that feeling of being part of global change, and it’s as simple as joining a school club or volunteering an hour of your time at a local shelter.

It’s easy, especially as a youth, to open a magazine or turn on the news or even travel to a different country, and feel discouraged by the state of the world.

Craig Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, even stopped reading the newspaper at one point during his university years, finding himself too depressed by the constant wars, famines, inequalities and environmental disasters. His mind was changed when Nobel Peace prize winner, Desmond Tutu, advised him to look at the headlines not as endless bad news, but, instead, a to-do list of endless opportunities for change.

I say we get started on that to-do list right away.