Daniela Papi's Blog

I did a presentation at my old middle school today, the "opening ceremony speech" for their "Wellness Day." Overall, it went better than I had expected, and I was impressed with the questions and comments from the students.

Doing research for the talk, I had to reflect on my own time in middle school and my perception of the world from then to now. I realized that now I have a much greater understanding of the value of education. I grew up in an affluent NYC suburb, and our public schools are some of the best in the country. I now realize that my schooling, even at their age, was in the top 1% of the world.... of the WORLD! That is even hard for me to grasp now, after seeing many areas which prove that.

We talked about living and working through our passions and looking past salary in our career goals as overall "wellness", as the day was titled, and happiness are contingent on that. I also added some quotes which I think relate to these topics:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you feel like you have come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Harold Whitman

"We are waking to the idea that if business inevitably shapes the future, it has a responsibility to choose what that future will be."
Fast Company - Social Capitalist Awards

In the afternoon I led a workshop titled "The World is a Village" based on the "if the world were 100 people" concept. We did an activity my friend Thao used to do in her classes, and we set up 10 chairs to represent all of the money in the world and 10 people to represent all of the people in the world. You know, if the stats I used are right, if we each got our own chair, the average income per person in the world would be $6,500 and the average cost of living (for basic needs) $4,500. Interesting....

Once I gave the lucky lady representing the wealthiest top 10% of the world 7 chairs and forced everyone else to squish onto the remaining three, the 6th graders started getting into their own little debate.

"Why don't people in poor countries just start making businesses and making more money?"

"If those are all the chairs there are, does that mean the top 10% people have to give up money if the people squished over there are going to get more?"

"Why don't we drop money down in those places, like on parachutes?"

"No silly. If we add more money, the value of all the money will go down, it's called inflation dude." (!!)

"If we travel, we go shopping, and that helps people."

"But, if we travel we have to think about where we give our money because like when we stay at the Hilton it's different then a Bed & Breakfast."

They were awesome. I enjoyed watching them discuss the topics we covered from corruption to capitalism. Impressive middle schoolers - surely the top 1% in terms of privilege :-)

I left reminding them that, as the leaders of tomorrows business, they have the "responsibility to choose what that future will be." I hope they choose to continue to question like they did today.

Imagine this trend of philanthropy being "fashionable" resulting in a new generation of social entrepreneurs as the norm of business. We'd have to all give Angelina more credit for her life after Tomb Raider ;-)