What Has Your Family Done to Change the World?

What originally started as a father/daughter bonding activity has grown into an inspirational movement teaching kids compassion, leadership, charity and that they can make a difference in the world, even as kids.

Kids Are Heroes began in early 2008 when MaryMargaret O’Neill, at age 9, asked her dad, Gabe, to help her build a website to help save animals. Gabe is a programmer so he thought that could be fun but why stop at animals? Why not extend the aid to people and the environment too?

MaryMargaret created the logo for Kids Are Heroes and a movement began. Kids Are Heroes features kids who are working to help others. It might involve giving up birthday presents to make a donation to a local organization or it can be as involved as helping build water-wells in Africa.

What started with his daughter giving up her birthday gifts to make a donation to a local animal shelter moved to she and two friends raising money to buy 80 Webkinz® for kids at a cancer camp, 250 MP3 players for kids at her local hospital and now, she is helping raise money to help the animals affected by the gulf oil spill of last year.

Besides the altruistic effect of helping others, the kids who get involved in Kids Are Heroes are learning many life skills like leadership, commitment, sacrifice and self-confidence. MaryMargaret even has a weekly radio show now to highlight kids helping others.  That media experience is incredible for a young kid.

Gabe says when they first started, he posted a new hero every few weeks and now he has a backlog of kids to write about because the response is so incredible.  

They have featured Ryan Hreljac who helped found Ryan’s Well Foundation to build wells for people in Africa.  At the age of 7, Ryan wanted to help people have a fresh water well instead of walking 6 hours to get their water. Now, 10 years later, his foundation has built over 550 wells in 16 countries to help over 600,000 people – all from one small idea from a kid.

Kids Are Heroes also featured their most-distant hero, Diana Onyonyi, a fifteen-year-old from Nairobi, Kenya. She helped raise $87,000 to help build a library and dorm for students in Nairobi and even traveled to attend the last Kids Are Heroes Day at the Francis Scott Key Mall in Frederick, Maryland.

Gabe says another great benefit for the kids is that they get to bond with one another via their events as well as the website and twitter and Facebook. The social media aspect as been a very strong force for this organization. At this writing, they have over 2,700 people who “like” their Facebook page and over 28,000 followers on twitter!

If you think this will take too much time to help your child get going, Gabe has some wise words for you to consider. He says, “Busy people find time to do things that are important.” And remember, helping others is a great benefit for this type of work for kids, but the greater benefit is what they are learning about themselves.

If you would like to get ideas on how you and your children can get involved in these types of activities, check out the Kids Are Heroes website for all kinds of stories, ideas, people and resources to get your own family going on this path of helping others and yourselves.