Parent Feature: Raising the Next Changemakers

Writing about change and changemakers, anyone from my generation has to actively resist the urge to begin by lamenting the inevitability of change. Or how it’s the only constant. Or maybe how we should be the change we want to see in the world. 

Young people around the world, though, buzz with an insatiable curiosity about the imperfect world they have inherited, unsure of how what seems ideal for humankind — lasting peace, a clean planet, equality — is still far from reality. Being a parent to a middle-schooler has meant encountering several big and small “but how” and “but why” dilemmas I can’t explain away. So in the true spirit of parenting and encouraging you to find your own path, I’m attempting a little list of things to do if you are on your way to making some much-needed change happen:

Be Frustrated: “Frustration is fuel that can lead to the development of a useful idea,” said 11-year-old Marley Dias who noticed that her library did not have enough books about girls like herself and began the #1000BlackGirlBooks movement in her fight for representation and identity. 16-year-old Boyan Slat started #TheOceanCleanup because, on a scuba diving trip with his family, he saw there was more floating plastic than fish in the ocean and it bothered him. Refusing to accept things that are is a prerequisite to the business of change-making.

Start small, uncertain, messy: Flashback summaries of most changemakers’ biographies show that their earliest steps weren’t marked by perfect circumstances, but an unshakeable belief in what needed to be done. Malala’s story began not with the bullet she took, but with a personal blog about educating the girl child. On a glitchy internet connection in the Swat Valley surrounded by people who didn’t share her conviction. Greta Thunberg did not begin at the UN; her activism began at home with upcycling and convincing her international musician mom to give up flying. 

Use your superpowers: Much has been spoken of the undeveloped prefrontal cortex of teenage, but it is also accompanied by the gift of absence of cynicism, the refusal to quit and the impulse to act on every possibility. It wouldn’t be a lie to confess that some of us look back on those heady days of childhood with fondness because almost everything seemed possible and achievable.

Tap your environment: It isn’t lost on me that passing the baton of fixing the world has unfortunately become an intergenerational tradition, but I do hold out hope here. I think despite the near-constant threat of war, the world reeling from a global pandemic and glaring inequalities, the current generation finds itself in a sunny spot of time. A time when science is making leaps that were only imagination a few years ago, all boring emails can be edited with a trusted bot and the human mind is free to meander and see where to go next. With some focus and responsibility, these innovations should help you ask more questions, explore more alternate realities and to quote from my favourite movie (“Interstellar”), “never forget that we are still pioneers. We’ve barely begun.”

Failures are temporary: If you fail at something when young, it is almost always ephemeral because it leaves behind the germ of an idea, the experience of going after it and the time to Edison your way through it.