The kids are all right

I’ve spent the last couple of days taking a brief detour to Knoxville to volunteer with Destination Imagination Global Finals, the world’s largest celebration of creativity. This year, 18,000 students and parents from 13 countries have descended upon the Tennessee town to compete in hands-on problem-solving challenges. This is in addition to more than 700 volunteers who pay their own way to get here and assist in making it a memorable experience for the world's brightest students. For 12 years I participated in the programing with a focus on service learning, teaching me the skills to identify community problems and implement creative solutions; a program that paved the way for my life in public service.

This is a space where kids solve their own problems and have ownership over their solutions, it is an anomaly in many senses.This place is rejuvenating, that makes you think the future is in good hands. I have watched as teenage girls from Qatar laughed and engaged with kids from Texas. I have watched as kids performed about depression, critical thinking, Chinese laborers, musical barber shops, and one particularly engaging performance about the process of bringing good ideas to life (despite obstacles put up by an alligator representing fear and self-doubt.) I have seen kids not just demand a better future but start to build one themselves. Global Finals makes you think that we might just be alright.

There was also another school shooting, today in Indiana. I wonder if they even had time raise the car dealership flag's from their place of mourning. Surrounded by these incredible kids, my outrage and sadness seems to only grow. How can we not find the moral courage as a nation to do something to stop children from dying.