Teachable Moments

I met with several of our newest student campaign leaders yesterday to show them the Wish List I emailed to you. They were stunned silent. They did not know that their kids’ campaign has a long distance angel providing their group with the tools of change. You should have seen their faces. Their facial expressions went from mouth open, heads back, to looking at each other confused, to heads slumping with smiles on each face. Then the questions came fast and furious. Who is this Naomi? Who are the Good People? It was the teachable moment, and I pulled out our photo archives to show the new leaders photos from past years including photos from the (Ziv Tzedakah Fund) New Jersey and Rhode Island Mitzvah Heroes Conferences. "What’s a Mitzvah?" asked one of the girls who has become a grade 6 leader named Amira, clothed in traditional Iraqi covering, a Muslim. After that teachable moment she said she has to meet Naomi to shake her hand and to show her the posters and poems she has made for the campaign using the tools sent last school year. She is young enough that stereotypes and prejudice have not yet been permanently formed. Her family moved to the U.S. to escape the sectarian violence in Baghdad three years ago. Amira is hoping to do some "mitzvahs" this year. Other grade 6 girls joined in: Renette, recently from Haiti and Biba from Morocco both promised to work with Amira. It was a moment of innocence and sweetness. Surrounding these girls were third, fourth and fifth generation Catholics, a Jewish boy, a Universalist eighth grader, a Buddhist and Baptist. Yet, united, everyone was looking at the photos and realizing on whose shoulders they were all standing. The connections to the people, who in the past worked to create a Kids’ Campaign for Iqbal Masih and children like Iqbal in any country, suddenly became visible and obvious. I jumped in. The lesson to be learned I told them was that there are teams of good people all over the world who quietly or loudly sacrifice and volunteer together to help make the world, anyone’s world, better. They are just like us, all races, all religions. They do it, I said, not because it gets you fame or free supplies, you volunteer together because it is the right thing to do. I congratulated the new leaders for joining for the right reason, and I hoped they would now understand that grade 6, 7 and 8 students can change the world a little, but only if we build bridges to other people. Those people might be the same age or old, the same religion or race or not. And finally, good people find each other, team and dream together about changing the world a little, then, remarkably they TAKE ACTION to turn those dreams into realities. That’s how people, any person really, can better the world. I told them that we are blessed in our Kids’ Campaign because good people found us! Imagine where we would be without their friendship and encouragement and support.