It these questions that when I think of, I think of many celebrated individuals like the Nobel laureate Professor. Wangari Maathai, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Koffi Anan, and many others. It has been my belief that during the youthful days of these celebrated world leaders, there was a dream that had formed in their minds that they would like to be part of the global arena and work for the betterment of the world. I equally believe that without hard work invested by these leaders, they would not have achieved their noble goals.
What is my point? My point here is that as the youths and the future leaders of this world, we should have a dream, and just as the late Martin Luther King Jr, would have put it, we need to work on these dreams to make them true.
One of the most easily achievable dreams for any youth would be to make this world a better to live in, in terms of Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Peace. These are the simple things that make the youth move. It is from these humble beginnings that the youth will come to realize their potentials when it comes to helping solve the global issues.
Having the urge to think Globally and act Locally is one of the pillars of youth participation on the GLOBAL scale. It was my utter joy to realize that even children, and to be precise, former Street Children could also have the passion to make this world a better place by assisting in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
This was clear to me when I had gone, as part of fulfilling my pledge to plant a billion tree campaign, to one of my favorite Children’s Home, Bethesda Children’s Mission. I had been invited to share with the kids as they were opening another branch. I thought it would be great to share with them the IDEA of planting tree whenever one feels is in the mood for celebrating. It was such a wonderful thing to see these former street children taking the idea of tree planting with such zeal that one would imagine they had been informed about the benefits of these trees. It was a situation whereby every one wanted to adopt a tree to take care of it and I had to make a promise to return later with more tree seedlings for us to plant with them.
With such children, one would not help but to imagine how what changes we could make if we have thousands of youth with such eagerness to achieve something and create a change. The children’s story is that which should give every youth an inspiration that we don’t have to be told what good our actions will bring to us, but should always take into consideration, the urge to create a difference to this world for our GENERATION, the FUTURE GENARATION, and many other GENERATIONS to come.
I am afraid, though, that this can not happen if we don’t have something to look into, “OUE DREAMS”. It is from the beauty of our DREAMS, that the flowers of success shall be seen and admired.
“DO YOU HAVE A DREAM?”
« return.