Believe in children ‘Inspire Tomorrow’

Angu Rajendran

When a group of eight assorted adults get together for an evening of dinner and coffee what usually ensues is a lot of gossip and laughter and an enjoyable but meaningless passage of time.

Not so this time around when eight adults got together to discuss how they wanted to change the many pressing issues in the world.

‘Inspire Tomorrow’ is what they came up with.

Realising that ‘I must do something will always solve more problems than ‘something must be done’ they followed the model of ‘I can,’ which empowers children to deal with any social issues with a mentor to guide them along. This model has been propagated by Indian Kiran Bir Seti and has proved widely successful in India.

Romesh de Mel, Khulsum Edirisinghe, Mihirini de Zoysa, Lalith Gunaratne, Ranjan Karunaratne, Chandy Jayawickrama, Samantha Gunaratne and Ranjan Gunaratne, with the permission of forward-thinking Principal Goolbai Gunasekara used Asian International School’s Form Four class of 75 children as their pilot project to EMPOWER CHILDREN and INSPIRE TOMORROW.

Enthusiasm was abundant as the children were randomly grouped into sevens. Each group had a teacher/mentor who guided them while they wrote down issues that were close to their heart.

Some groups felt that it was just luck that they were born into affluent homes where education was taken for granted while so many children in the shanties nearby for no fault of theirs had no chance at an English education.

The groups called them over and taught the slum children English during their free afternoons. The results were so tangible that the children during their report said ‘We felt like heroes’. Many went to the Municipal Council to get permission to clean up the garbage on the school road. Some of them wanted to clean up stretches of beaches that had been totally destroyed by garbage.

Many wanted to clean up the school and its environs separating the disposable and non-disposable waste.

Every group outlined their project that would change society in exactly seven days.

Nothing was too scary for children.

While adults would balk at the idea of going to the Municipal Council and speaking to the ‘authorities’ to get permission to install dustbins, children had no qualms about it. In fact when adults believe in children, they get the all needed confidence to be responsible citizens of the future.

Nothing was below their dignity. While adults would wonder what their friends would say about their picking up rakes and garbage bags and cleaning everyone’s waste from the beaches. For children, it was simply joy. The dirtier the beach stretch, the more fun to clean. The more tangible the results.

At the end of seven days, the groups met in the hall and presented their reports. The project definitely had a lasting impact on the children.

Here were children who believed in themselves, simply because a group of adults no longer thought that they were mere children but ‘responsible adults of change’.

Everyone wants to be needed. Everyone wants to know that you can change society. And a group of eight people (the Inspire Tomorrow group) gave of their time, energy and focus to help invest in our future. And for absolutely no remuneration at all.

Hats off to the Inspire Tomorrow group who are available to any school for Inspiring all their Tomorrows!