We Day at The Aud
Posted Nov 16, 2011 04:51:51 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Aud was packed on Wednesday, with 6,000 people, mostly students, attending “We Day.”
The day is meant to provide an inspirational forum for young people discussing and looking for solutions to the most pressing social issues of the day.
Many speakers, including the likes of basketball legend Magic Johnson, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, actress and activist, Mia Farrow and Free The Children co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger talked about how youth can take action to be the change they seek in the world.
Johnson said that when he went public with his struggles with HIV, it was because he wanted to help affect change and that the “coolest” thing someone can do, is to help improve the life of somebody else. “What I’ve decided today to do, is to join forces with Free The Children; we’re going to do something powerful in Los Angeles, we’re going to drive a lot of kids in L.A., and we’re going to bring this same program that you have here in Waterloo, we’re going to take it to L.A. and make sure we’re doing some great things.”
Craig Kielburger told the crowd “this is the movement of our time. Ordinary people coming together, standing together to change the world.”
You could hear a pin drop when Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire spoke of youth in other parts of the world being forced to war as child soldiers. Dallaire spoke of a story where he was on the way to a negotiation table, but couldn’t get through. He stopped near the barrier that was guarded by 12 and 13 year old child soldiers. When he opened his door, one of those soldiers pushed a gun into his face.
“His finger was on the trigger and he was sweating and he was nervous. All around him the other kids were yelling and screaming because they were all high on drugs that they had injected into them. They weren’t aware of the enourmous dangers that they were in and also that they were causing. As I saw him trying to decide whether he was going to pull the trigger and blow my head off or not, he spotted the chocolate bar in my hand, and he stopped. Was that little boy just as human as you. Does that little boy or girl on the barrier count just as much as you do? Are you more human than them? Are we not all the same and equal?”
Dallaire was preceded by a young man, Michel Chikwanine, who was a child-soldier. He held up signs explaining what happened to him, including having to shoot his best-friend dead. “I was forced to be a child soldier,” one of his final signs read.
Entertainers include Canadian rock band The Midway State and platinum selling, Juno Award winning Canadian pop star and producer, Shawn Desman.
