Alaina Podmorow, 13, Raises $300,000 For Afghan Women

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“The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Alaina Podmorow heard those words — from Canadian journalist Sally Armstrong — during a speech on the treatment of Afghan girls and women. She was nine.

Now, Podmorow heads a non-profit, Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan:

Poised and confident, Podmorow, 13, now gives inspirational speeches herself as the founder of the nonprofit Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan, a fundraising organization that channels money for teachers’ salaries and training through Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.

“I found that it doesn’t matter how little or young you are, you can make this difference,” she said in an interview during a conference on Afghanistan hosted by the Canadian Federation of University Women.

Her first fundraising effort in her hometown of Kelowna was aimed at raising $750, the amount she was told would pay an average salary to a teacher for a year in Afghanistan.

“We raised enough for four teachers’ salaries for one year and I was so amazed because that was more than I could have ever imagined raising at nine years old,” she said.

Chapters of Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan have sprung up around the country and fundraisers have been held in many cities. The groups have raised about $160,000 from the public and almost the same amount again in matching funds from the federal Canadian International Development Agency, the foreign-aid wing of the federal government.

Canadian kids helping other kids overseas in so organized and sophisticated a fashion isn’t new. In 2002, Craig Kielburger — then 19 — was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his aid work, which he began at the age of 12. Kids Can Free The Children has built 316 primary schools around the world, allowing 20,000 children to attend school. It has 100,000 members in 35 countries.

I’m proud of kids like these. I wish their names and actions were widely-known — not morons like Lindsay Lohan.

Teens Meet Dalai Lama, Mia Farrow and Jane Goodall At "Rock Concert For Social Justice"

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Talk about a field trip — yesterday in Vancouver 16,000 students gathered to hear social activists, from the Dalai Lama and Mia Farrow to Jane Goodall, at We Day, founded by Free The Children, a Canadian youth movement that has created 500 education and development projects worldwide and involved more than a million children and teens in projects focused on social justice in Canada and overseas in six countries, including Kenya, China and Ecuador.

The group was founded by Craig Kielburger, who, at 12, read a newspaper story about the murder of a child laborer in Pakistan. Enlisting 11 friends at his Toronto school to help, he began this charity, which now holds We Day in Toronto and Vancouver every year, a full day of inspiration. Toronto’s will be held October 5, webcast from 9:10 to 2:30 EST.

The Vancouver Sun reported:

“Michael Berglund, 16, who boarded a bus in Kamloops at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday after working until 11:30 p.m. the night before at a restaurant, was too excited to be tired.The Dalai Lama’s speech about compassion in particular inspired him, he said. “In social justice class we learn to express ourselves and work toward a socially just society and getting rid of our prejudices.”

There are more than enough opportunities to work toward social justice in Kamloops itself, the high school student said.“We have a lot of homeless people, and more can be done to help them,” Berglund added…Seymour elementary school teacher Jeannie Kerr said learning about global social justice was important for her 24 Grade 6 and 7 students.“I want them to explore for themselves the sources of the global inequities, who has them and why,” Kerr said.

Were you taught social justice in grade school? What do you think of the idea?