The Vow of Silence: Standing up for children's rights

“We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.” ~ Malala Yousafzai


So, I'd like to write a brief post about the vow of silence. It is a truly amazing event and I hope many of you will participate next year. 

What is the vow of silence?!

The vow of silence is when kids all over first world countries try to spread awareness of child labor issues. We stand up for the right to play and the right to have a voice. We did this on May 2nd by going silent from 8:45-2:55ish on the school day. So we were pretty much silent for the whole school time except for a few minutes. 

We put on a sticker that said 'No talking' and we weren't allowed to talk, text, write notes or e-mails for that time. This is to represent people who don't have voice. 

The event inspired many and they saw how much we cared about the issue. 

How many times did we fail and talk?!

I'm sure many of you are questioning how I could have stayed silent for that time. It's not a very long time but I do like talking. 

Some people talked 4 times. Let me tell you about the times I failed. 

First, I spoke just before they told us the vow was broken. I said a whole sentence and then I was thinking "oops. what have I done?!??!?! I AM AN OUTCAST."

Secondly, like 3 seconds from when the vow was broken, I wrote a note to Jonathan saying "can we talk now?!" 
and he kinda broke his vow too and replied
"no." 

:P 

However, one of the teachers did say that this year's group of students were very good at it compared to other years. 

So some minor slip ups.... but we are spoiled children.... you can't expect much from us. 

I bet if children suffering from child labor knew we were taking this vow they would be like, "that's pathetic. It's not helping me in any way because I still have no education and have to work here everyday."
Except they won't be able to speak.... so they'd only think that. 

You know what I mean. 

Tell me your opinion or share your experiences

If you were someone who took the vow of silence and would like to share your opinion, do post a comment!! do leave a chatbox message, do +1 this to show your support. 

Under every post there's this thing. Click the link to submit a comment and use the +1 button to plus one it. 

Learn more at iamsilent.com

It will link you to a Free the Children page called 'We are Silent' which is related to the vow of silence. 

We-day 2013

                        We-day 2013

Finally, I have time to tell y'all about Toronto's We day 2013, a very special event organized by free the children. 

This truly was a life changing experience, we got to see the Kenyan boys choir, Molly Burkes, and other awesome people. I explained we-day a little bit more in this post. 

Ok, so here's what  the me-to-we leadership team of Crosby heights public school (that includes me) did @ Air Canada Center.... 

Firstly we had a photo shoot right outside the building. That was fun ^_^ everyone held one letter up that was part of the phrase 'be the change'.... I was the 'h' in the 'the'. A bunch of people took pictures of us. We were really excited.

When we finally went inside, we were BLOWN AWAY by the noise of all the people there. Later, we learned that over 20,000 people from schools all over Ontario were there!! That was more than I estimated before we saw the crowd. These 20,000 people were people who wanted to make a change in the world for better education, healthcare, anti-bullying etc.

And then.... the speakers started coming on the stage. That was awesome. There was the premier of Ontario, and there was a little girl with her named Sydney who wanted to be prime minister of Canada. You all should vote for Sydney when she grows up!!!!

Molly Burke was there too. Molly Burke was visually impaired. Her vision narrowed from when she was 5 and completely went blind when she was 14. Its so sad :( for her, it would probably have been worse than being blind all your life because if you were blind all your life you would never know what its like to see anyway. But Molly Burke did. When she was little everyone would tease her and call her 'blind girl'. It was awful.
One day, the people who she thought were her friends invited her to a party. They said the party was for her and that they would do her hair and make up and do all sorts of fun things together. Molly was so happy when her friends put Mousse in her hair.
Sadly, she knew something was wrong and even though she was blind, she knew when a camera flashed in her face. It turned out her friends had actually wrote ugly words on her face with marker and had put whip cream in her hair. Soon, it was all over Facebook and Myspace and Twitter.
The 'Blind girl' was being laughed at all over her school.
Molly told us this sad story and why she was against bullying.

Everyone cheered to show that they cared about Molly's cause.

Oh, and we were told about what free the children was doing in Kenya for better education there. The Kenyan boys choir performed.

And Masaii bracelets were sold there.

There were a lot of other people there too, sadly I don't remember everyone's name.... but that doesn't mean I forgot what they all stood for.

There was Spencer West, he told us to redefine possible. Spencer lost his legs and didn't even get fake ones. He didn't use a wheelchair either.
When he came onto the stage, we were all awestruck.



And he actually climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro!!!!!!!!!! WOW.

ok..... those were my favorite things at we-day!!

Other stuff: 

There's a new 'kowz' page. check it out!! Click here to see the kowz page

GOING TO WE-DAY ON FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am sooooooo excited!!
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Ok guys, so first you're going to be wondering what We-day is. SO, I'll tell you about it. DUH :-P !!
We-day is an event that will take place THIS FRIDAY and it brings students and other people from all over the world together to talk about important issues around the world. We-day is organized by Me-to-we, which is this thing started by Free the Children that goes to schools around Canada and find kewl students (like me) lol.... not to brag or anything, and encourages them to do stuff.... ok let me be more specific about what Free the Children is....

It's a  non-profit organization started by Craig and Mark Keilburger (when they were only 12 years old!!) to help stop child abuse. Well, now it also supports enviromental causes, ending animal cruelty, and giving people fresh drinking water. As you can see, they are pretty awesome!! And this organization means a lot to me.

I have a friend named Katelyn, she's awesome right, and her dad used to work for free the children. In fact, he helped start Me-to-we and to organize We-day. He even did a bunch of awesome stuff like designing this logo:


It's a very nice and simple logo, isn't it?! I really like it.

SO.... I made it to the me-to-we leadership team which only 11 students from our overpopulated intermediate division got into:


Now I'd like to tell you about what I will be doing at we-day. We will be treated as V.I.P guests at a  thing where there are going to be some awesome people speaking. Such as....

The Honourable Kathleen Wynne-
She is the current premier of Ontario,Canada and it's pretty amazing that she is taking some time off from her busy workplace to talk to us!! I wrote an article about Kathleen Wynne so I know a lot about her. She really loves Ontario's youth!! I might post the article some time later.


The Kenyan boys Choir-
These are probably the people who I am most excited to see. Don't they look like Masai warriors?!  


Martin Luther King III-
An American human rights advocate. I don't know too much about him. But we'll find out....


Demi Lovato-
URMIGURD SHE IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRETTTTYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will you believe that she had to suffer bullying?! IKR, what terrible person would bully her :o ?!
Izb loves her!! I don't really know too much about her though.... but she's a great singer.



Craig and Mark Keilbuger themselves!!!!!!

THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.

Ok guys, that's all for this post!!!!!!!!!! I'll try to upload lots of We-Day pictures and stuff!!!!!!!!!

BYE!!!!

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