I’m inspired by young folks—I mean in their twenties and younger—who are ALREADY working to literally change the world. While stuck in Friday traffic last Friday [May 25, 2012], listening The California Report on NPR, I heard such a young woman: 20-something Nigerian Muslim, Ajarat Bada, living in the Los Angeles area on a soon-to-expire student visa.
With modern technology, this idea of changing the world means something very different than it did in 1972. In 2010, Ajarat applied—through a Facebook posting—to an international summit for leaders in their twenties called, One Young World. She was selected and found herself in London with nearly 1,000 other young leaders from around the world with the likes of Desmund Tutu and Kofi Annan.
Ajarat and many of fellow young leaders have stayed connected by putting social media to good use. In their discussions, they realized that interfaith dialogue was a central theme of the One Young World summit, but not in the United Nations. So together they created the Missing Millennium Developement Goal, an initiative to make interfaith dialogue a part of the global agenda. MMDG asks a profound question:
“Do you agree that there should be no violence in the name of any religion?”
It does my heart good to know that many of today’s most positive, courageous leaders are tapping these young folk for tomorrow. How can we not get behind this?
Such a cool endeavor. Brilliant! Thank you for sharing it Anita.
Thank you Anita for the Angela Davis Toni Morrison conversation. It was inspiring especially on the ending topic of knowledge and freedom. Cheers!
So glad you watched it. Two amazing forces.
Young people always bring hope anew into the world, they are hope itself; only they shouldn’t listen too much to their elders–except for YOUNG ones like Desmond Tutu!
The main thing is, as they get older–they should stay YOUNG! and not absorb the world’s tired old values. Old people should ask the young people what they think.
This looks like a great project. Violence usually doesn’t ever come from religion, but from tribalism masquerading as true religion. That’s the hope–to let the young people keep on overcoming tribalism’s violent selfish self-destructiveness, under the evil guise of being “religion.” Young people see through that.
Thanks, Pete, for this insightful comment. All through 7 years of homeschooling our daughter, my approach was to ask her what she thought first. I learned some beautiful things this way!
You are going to love the small world nature of this…Erin Schrode, is an MA alum-
(“apathy is out!”) (There was a link to the young news site through youtube). It amazes me how good work keeps coming full circle.
Amazing indeed! Love it!
Thanks Anita for profiling this story. I am also making sure to contribute my quota to making the world a better place. I also know Erin, we are both One Young World Ambassadors. The world is small indeed.