A Plea from Dylan

Posted by Gabe on March 16, 2010 under Kids are Heroes | 2 Comments to Read

I received this email this afternoon from one of our heroes, Dylan Mahalingam. Here is his profile on  our web site.  If you read it, and I really hope you do, you will discover more evidence of how Dylan, at just 14 years old, is changing the world.  I know he has the resoources to do what he suggests, he just needs funding.  And all he is asking for is your vote, not for any amount of money from you.  If this touches you as it did me, please send the link on to your friends and family. Thank you!

Dear Mr. O’Neill,
Good evening. Best Buy has provided our organization, Lil’ MDGs (www.lilmdgs.org), the opportunity to win a $5,000.00 grant to fund a new project. The catch is that we have to earn that grant by getting people to vote for our project on-line.  The odds are good, since we are a finalist in this program.
Here is our project proposal in a nutshell, so you will understand the value of it. Before I describe it, though, I want you to know that we are not asking you to vote for us as a friend or family member, because we don’t feel that one person deserves this over any another. We are only asking you to vote for our project if you feel that it is deserving of this grant.

I know this e-mail is long, but I am requesting that you please take the time to read this in full. Thanks. :)

Purpose of the Listen Up! Project
Children by nature are empathetic and they want to help, but most of them do not have access to age acceptable or appropriate medium for learning about the issues. Awareness materials do exist on this topic, but they portray children as victims – disturbing pictures of children in skin and bones, flies in their eyes, forlorn eyes – rather than as individuals with their own right. These materials do not invoke outrage or empower the children; rather, they evoke pity and generate money from adults. Our goal with Listen Up! is to develop age-appropriate materials to inspire younger children to work together towards meeting the MDGs.

How?

We will develop movies, animations, songs, and games for each of the Millennium Development Goals to captivate young children. We will make these materials available through schools, send them out to libraries on CDs, and post them on YouTube and on our websites to enable easy viewing in classrooms and homes. We have already teamed up with graphic designers, game developers, and animation experts to bring our project to reality upon receiving initial funding.

Why?

It is easy for people, in general, to understand and act upon something if it is given in a form that is naturally appealing to them. Children are attracted to animations, music, and games. We believe that this will be a great avenue for us to educate, engage, inspire, and empower more youth to get involved in meeting the UN MDGs.

Best Buy Grant Goal

The voting period is from March 15th to April 2nd. We are trying to figure out the best way to run our campaign for votes, and this is what we think would work best:
  • We are looking for friends and family who are willing to vote for us once per day.
  • We want to know if you are able or willing to do this, and if you are, please email us back with a YES.
  • We will send you an email reminder every day.
  • Voting will take place on https://www.at15.com/contests_scholarships/community_impact. Vote for Listen Up!
  • Voters must register as members of at15.com and therefore, must be over the age of 13. You go to the link above to register. Registration is simple.
    Please remember to leave the box for “I would like to receive e-mail updates” unchecked if you don’t want to receive any e-mails from them.
    Your password will be e-mailed to you.
    You can click on the link in the e-mail and reset your password.
    You only need to register once; after this, you can simply go to:
    https://www.at15.com/contests_scholarships/community_impact to cast your vote.     You can vote once per day and voting started on March 15th.
  • You can vote once per e-mail address, every day.
  • If you have a Twitter account, please tweet about this daily.
  • The voting and tweeting will take less than 1 min each day.
  • The contest allows you to vote for 2 different projects each day to encourage people to vote for people they don’t know, based solely on their projects (a good twist!)
  • I truly believe that the project we are putting out there will create something phenomenal to engage children worldwide, and that is why we are comfortable asking you to do this.

Once you log in you get two votes.  Please vote for the Climate Action Club as your second vote as effort was created by another KAH hero, Chloe Maxmin.

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