Four youth aim to stop Ebola, heal the world

According to Confucius, wisdom, compassion and courage are the three universally recognized qualities of men.

In this case, all three qualities can be abundantly found in four kids–four leaders, none of whom measure more than five feet tall, members of a team called the SSS Imagineers.

Amidst a local crisis that saw four Dallas residents stricken with Ebola, four third and fifth grade students from St. Mark’s School and Richardson’s Schell and Stinson Elementary Schools, Sahil Dodda, Anushka Sridhar, Ananya Sridhar and Keshav Vasanth, desperately wanted to stop the spread of irrational fears behind the spread of the virus among his classmates.

“A lot of kids at school were freaking out, so we wanted them to have the facts,” said Keshav Vasanth, a fifth grader at Stinson Elementary.

The kids and their coaches, Vidya Krishnan and Nithya Venkatraman, have long been participants in Destination Imagination (DI), a global non-profit program that fosters creativity and service learning in children. Thus began the Kid-2-Kid Ebola Awareness Campaign, “Heal the World”, a service learning challenge which supplies facts and uses the power of branding to address the relevant community and global need.

The student leaders also contacted the City’s Public Information Office to join the KnowEbola campaign in Dallas. Their logo is now shown along with other City partners that are part of the campaign at KnowEbolaDallas.com.

With a campaign challenge firmly in hand, outreach formally began and the youth leaders decided not only to increase awareness, but to also raise monies to benefit Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who are heavily engaged in Ebola treatment and relief efforts throughout Africa. Their message and branding “Stop Ebola: Heal the World” became a t-shirt, a wristband and a Booster.com campaign, with the hopes of raising $2500 for MSF before February 1, 2015.
To date, the campaign has raised nearly $300, but the greatest success has come from the intangibles.

“The kids really took to the cause of Ebola awareness and the people afflicted here at home in Dallas and abroad. You can’t teach compassion. You can only coach it, foster it, help it grow and direct it to where it’s most needed,” stated Vidya Krishnan, Destination Imagination Kid-2-Kid Ebola Awareness Campaign coach.

For the SSS Imagineers, the end result of the campaign is worth the hours of effort.
I like the fact that we’re helping people not just in our community, but all across the world the world,” said ten-year old Ananya Sridhar.

Wisdom, compassion and courage do come in small packages. Just talk to the SSS Imagineers.
To support the campaign, visit http://booster.com/HealtheWorldNow.

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