hi good morning my name is pooja and I
am here to tell you a very interesting
story or rather a series of
interconnected stories what happened at
different times in different places but
the beginning of it all dating back to
the time when I was just a child in 2002
I was in grade seven an unexpected
downpour had canceled our morning
assembly in school but we would still
take part in it we would go back to our
classrooms and the team holding the
assembly would still hold it from the
principal’s office
thought for the day a voice boomed
today’s thought to ponder over is the
starpha story written by Laura Nestle a
man was walking along a seashore and he
finds a boy he finds a boy picking
starfish and throwing them back into the
sea what are you doing little boy he
asked well sir as you can see the Sun is
up and the tide is going out I’m
throwing the starfish back into the sea
if I don’t do that they will all dry and
die the young boy was so innocent and
the old man chuckled to himself and said
Oh little one there are thousands of
starfish washed ashore along miles and
miles of the coast you can’t make any
difference
the little boy listened politely bent
down picked up another starfish and
flung it back into the ocean smiled at
the man and said well sir it made a
difference to that once thank you very
much
she finished thirteen years later it is
2015 and all my newsfeeds
are filled with the grueling updates
from the Syrian war which actually
started in 2011 and it’s consequential
refugee crisis that was being covered by
international media and sparked global
outrage
out of all that I saw there were three
particular chronological events that
really shook me to my core the first one
was the
bitch of a four-year-old hoodia at the
at my refugee camp insidious where she
bit her lips raised her hands eyes
filled with terror and she surrendered
to a camera thinking was a gun the next
one were a series of 20 portraits taken
by Brandon santen the photo blog of
humans of New York why he travelled
across Europe covering refugee stories
the third one was an image a horrifying
image of a three year old Alan Kurdi
washed ashore the Greek island of Kos
Ilan his mother and his brother drowned
in the Mediterranean Sea while
attempting to flee from Syria now this
image in particular spurred an analogy
that abysmally hurts me here was a
starfish washed ashore that was not
saved humanity has failed asserted most
popular headlines but in this modifying
image amidst blaming governments
terrorism and countries what I saw was
the utter failure of mine yours and the
rest of the world’s ability to stop an
ongoing crime against humanity Allah was
just one of the hundred thousands of
children who were deemed dead by the
Syrian war and leaving another seven
million as refugees and in danger the
most outrageous fact about the Syrian
war on the refugee crisis which is one
of the most grave humanitarian crisis of
our times is the very fact that we were
all witnessing it live so I soon resumed
the responsibility of the boy in the
starfish story I heard once when I was a
little girl and I decided to pick and
throw and attempt to save one by one at
the time I was a 23 year old mechanical
engineer turned teacher I was not a rich
person I was not an influential person I
was not a powerful person well nothing
really has changed even from then but
the point being I had no idea what to do
that is when Leo
Lia’s inspiring words came to me too
often we underestimate the power of a
touch a smile a kind word a listening
year an honest compliment or the
smallest acts of caring all of which
have the power to change a life and the
potential to turn a life around I
decided to do whatever I can with
whatever I have wherever I was I decided
to write a letter to a refugee child
yeah I know everybody told me that I was
crazy to accept this one wonderful man
Chris Littlefield who happened to be the
counselor at a summer camp in the United
States where my boyfriend went to as a
teenager in 2003 Chris believed in the
idea and networked me to his contacts in
the UNHCR now it’s undeniably true that
you can only make a difference to one
starfish at a time so to save more I
decided to inspire more people to help
me pick and throw starfish back into the
sea in a span of two days 25 people from
11 countries and seven time zones got
together a Facebook page was created and
the first thing that came into my mind
was put as the initiatives name letters
of love letters of love were to send
letters which are handwritten postcards
tokens of love hope and solidarity to
more than 1300 Syrian refugee children
across nine community centers in Turkey
the children were overjoyed to receive
these small packets of doodled postcards
the feedback we’ve received we’re
heartwarming all the joy that
encompassed in that particular day which
was January 1st 2016 looks like this so
I was very happy I thought it would be a
small year-end project and I was very
content and on a regular working day in
school I was assigned as the proxy
teacher to sixth seats and I walk in and
we are discussing current affairs and to
my surprise not a lot of the children
knew about the Syrian war there
crisis so I decided to talk to them
about it huh they had so many questions
most of which I could broadly classify
them into two one was mom why do we not
know about this and the other one was
mom why aren’t we doing anything about
it
that is when it struck me that it is not
that we don’t want to make a difference
it’s just as the lack of awareness and
also the lack of access to the right
opportunities or the right platforms
where we can make a difference in our
own capacity was absent so a bunch of
forty sixth graders and I sat down to
discuss how we can make a difference to
a global refugee crisis amidst the many
intelligent and very feasible options
and solutions that they presented some
of them I want to share them with you
one was let’s ask the Indian Air Force
to go and airlift people in Syria and
bring them to India the second one was
let’s send them that’s back and send
them food clothes medicines and Lego
another one was everybody loves pizza
and ice creams let’s send them pizza and
ice creams and then one female hand went
up and and she was like ma’am Jimmy
write letters to them I smiled and I
told them about letters of love and they
sat down to write incredibly moving
letters one which you can see here
Sahara was kind enough to write down his
roll number and his division as well
as soon as I got down with class and I
got back to the staff room I opened my
laptop and suddenly there was a sub team
of letters of love that was formed and
the educational wing of letters of love
unfurled we got together to develop
empathy centric curricula which teachers
could adopt in classrooms which would
raise awareness cultivate compassion and
also highlight the potential of each and
every child as a change agent in the
society a lot of teachers who got to
know of it by word of mouth used the
curriculum in their classrooms and the
results were so fascinating in fact the
teachers were so amused with the empathy
quotient of their students now
incidentally it was the same year unit
sure got back to us with a request for
13,000 letters for not just Syrian
refugee children but also Iraqi and uzd
refugee children as totally a testimony
to the fact that happiness is contagious
all that went into January 1st 2017
looked like this the summer of 2017
found me working as a counselor at seeds
of peace international camp the same
summer camp which my boyfriend went to
when he was a child the same summer camp
where Chris worked at Chris being the
wonderful person who believed in the
idea at its nascent stage now since this
piece is a it’s an American nonprofit
that creates generations of leaders from
conflict countries through peace
building and conflict transformation we
invite exceptional teenagers from
conflict countries of India Pakistan
Afghanistan Israel Palestine Jordan
Egypt as well as children from the UK
and the USA and it it works in a
traditional summer camp model where the
children are made to share living and
eating spaces with each other
engage in immersive dialogue process and
actually interact with the so called
other so in my bunk one cold night my
Israeli camper woke up in the middle of
the night and put on her blanket over
her freezing bunkmate a Palestinian the
next day morning my palace
can perform the act all whelmingly kind
for she couldn’t find the right words to
tell her and can be in gratitude so
daniela decided to make it special and
took help of her Israeli friends and
wrote a letter in Hebrew for Noga she
gave the letter to Naga hugs followed
tears followed and so did an idea hey
Pooja do you think we can work out
something like a pen pals between our
Israeli and Palestinian schools you know
the problem with Israelis and
Palestinians is that we don’t talk we
don’t know the other side so maybe if we
can use your letters it would be a great
idea and we wouldn’t have to hate each
other blindly anyway can we do that now
what I learnt and what I stand by in my
very humble experience with children
up-to-date is the fact that when kids
come to you with motivated ideas
excluding passion you do not say no
because it was a delight to see them
break out of their chrysalis and bloom
into butterflies and just run the world
the peripheral project was initiated
with the objective of fostering
impossible friendships and also to
encourage rich exchange of perspectives
we do not want to dive into the conflict
setting right at first so we wanted a
smaller known drew so we had students in
Bombay write letters to children who are
victims of war in Syria those under
siege in Gaza Palestine as well as
Syrian refugee children in Turkey the
best part they were all right back
I got back from camp by mid-august back
to India to an array of emails from a 13
year old Alaskan girl I was amused and
the subject read please help me make a
difference
Gabi wheeze had also contacted almost
all the organizations I had worked with
prior to seeds of peace even called up a
few of my bosses and there she was she
it so happened that I immediately got in
touch with her and she was like puja
please help me make a difference this is
my story
Gabi when she was 11 years old saw a
couple of videos online and was very
disturbed with what she solved the
Syrian war and the refugee crisis and
decided to make a difference
she mobilized her community and her
school to collect so many hundreds and
letters to be sent to Syrian refugee
children now she gonna know where to
send it to or whom she could possibly
ask for guidance
a simple Google search led her to the
letters of love Facebook page and there
she was talking to me please help me
make a difference
the choice of her words in the email
subject really inspired me profoundly
now there’s no dichotomy of thought and
action here this was a 13 year old very
aware of a crisis
she ideated on her empathy and decided
to do something about it and in fact had
the project ready in hand she was just
looking for a platform and a mentor it
was Gabi’s energy and enthusiasm that
gave where to the student ambassador
program of letters of love where we hold
young leaders who have ideas and who
have the energy to conduct and to
execute it in their communities both
globally and locally on a global sphere
they send letters to refugee children
and in a local sphere they address
marginalized and vulnerable communities
depending upon the demographic they are
situated in so that would be writing
letters and connecting communities with
the students and homeless people LGBTQ
people the war veterans prisoners or as
of recently the Parkland mass shooting
survivors in Florida all of what went
now in retrospect it was a staffer story
that I heard at a morning assembly when
I was a child that gave birth to an idea
an idea over the span of three years and
only nine working months helps people in
connecting with 30,000 Syrian Iraqi UCB
Palestinian Rohingya Afghan and Kurdish
refugee children empowered more than 200
teachers sensitized more than 8,000
children conducted more than 350 penpal
facilitations had raised around 6500
dollars through crowdfunding hard
collaborations with more than 40
organizations effectively engaged more
than 20,000 youth across 19 countries
and is now a member of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
which refugees coalition the United
Nations sustainable development
solutions news network as well as the
United Network of youth peace builders
in The Hague now what baffled me more
than these targeting statistics is the
fact that this school mate whose name I
know not of whose awareness whose whose
existence I’m not aware of her choice in
choosing this particular anecdote gave
rise to a global massive change movement
a typhoon of kindness I’d love to leave
you with that thought and these smiling
faces it helped create thank you very
very much
thank you ma’am
a small urge to make a difference was
the first building block of an inspiring
cause like letters of love what a
sublime example of the butterfly effect
we would now request our honorable Vice
Chancellor sir to kindly present a
memento as a token of appreciation to miss
am here to tell you a very interesting
story or rather a series of
interconnected stories what happened at
different times in different places but
the beginning of it all dating back to
the time when I was just a child in 2002
I was in grade seven an unexpected
downpour had canceled our morning
assembly in school but we would still
take part in it we would go back to our
classrooms and the team holding the
assembly would still hold it from the
principal’s office
thought for the day a voice boomed
today’s thought to ponder over is the
starpha story written by Laura Nestle a
man was walking along a seashore and he
finds a boy he finds a boy picking
starfish and throwing them back into the
sea what are you doing little boy he
asked well sir as you can see the Sun is
up and the tide is going out I’m
throwing the starfish back into the sea
if I don’t do that they will all dry and
die the young boy was so innocent and
the old man chuckled to himself and said
Oh little one there are thousands of
starfish washed ashore along miles and
miles of the coast you can’t make any
difference
the little boy listened politely bent
down picked up another starfish and
flung it back into the ocean smiled at
the man and said well sir it made a
difference to that once thank you very
much
she finished thirteen years later it is
2015 and all my newsfeeds
are filled with the grueling updates
from the Syrian war which actually
started in 2011 and it’s consequential
refugee crisis that was being covered by
international media and sparked global
outrage
out of all that I saw there were three
particular chronological events that
really shook me to my core the first one
was the
bitch of a four-year-old hoodia at the
at my refugee camp insidious where she
bit her lips raised her hands eyes
filled with terror and she surrendered
to a camera thinking was a gun the next
one were a series of 20 portraits taken
by Brandon santen the photo blog of
humans of New York why he travelled
across Europe covering refugee stories
the third one was an image a horrifying
image of a three year old Alan Kurdi
washed ashore the Greek island of Kos
Ilan his mother and his brother drowned
in the Mediterranean Sea while
attempting to flee from Syria now this
image in particular spurred an analogy
that abysmally hurts me here was a
starfish washed ashore that was not
saved humanity has failed asserted most
popular headlines but in this modifying
image amidst blaming governments
terrorism and countries what I saw was
the utter failure of mine yours and the
rest of the world’s ability to stop an
ongoing crime against humanity Allah was
just one of the hundred thousands of
children who were deemed dead by the
Syrian war and leaving another seven
million as refugees and in danger the
most outrageous fact about the Syrian
war on the refugee crisis which is one
of the most grave humanitarian crisis of
our times is the very fact that we were
all witnessing it live so I soon resumed
the responsibility of the boy in the
starfish story I heard once when I was a
little girl and I decided to pick and
throw and attempt to save one by one at
the time I was a 23 year old mechanical
engineer turned teacher I was not a rich
person I was not an influential person I
was not a powerful person well nothing
really has changed even from then but
the point being I had no idea what to do
that is when Leo
Lia’s inspiring words came to me too
often we underestimate the power of a
touch a smile a kind word a listening
year an honest compliment or the
smallest acts of caring all of which
have the power to change a life and the
potential to turn a life around I
decided to do whatever I can with
whatever I have wherever I was I decided
to write a letter to a refugee child
yeah I know everybody told me that I was
crazy to accept this one wonderful man
Chris Littlefield who happened to be the
counselor at a summer camp in the United
States where my boyfriend went to as a
teenager in 2003 Chris believed in the
idea and networked me to his contacts in
the UNHCR now it’s undeniably true that
you can only make a difference to one
starfish at a time so to save more I
decided to inspire more people to help
me pick and throw starfish back into the
sea in a span of two days 25 people from
11 countries and seven time zones got
together a Facebook page was created and
the first thing that came into my mind
was put as the initiatives name letters
of love letters of love were to send
letters which are handwritten postcards
tokens of love hope and solidarity to
more than 1300 Syrian refugee children
across nine community centers in Turkey
the children were overjoyed to receive
these small packets of doodled postcards
the feedback we’ve received we’re
heartwarming all the joy that
encompassed in that particular day which
was January 1st 2016 looks like this so
I was very happy I thought it would be a
small year-end project and I was very
content and on a regular working day in
school I was assigned as the proxy
teacher to sixth seats and I walk in and
we are discussing current affairs and to
my surprise not a lot of the children
knew about the Syrian war there
crisis so I decided to talk to them
about it huh they had so many questions
most of which I could broadly classify
them into two one was mom why do we not
know about this and the other one was
mom why aren’t we doing anything about
it
that is when it struck me that it is not
that we don’t want to make a difference
it’s just as the lack of awareness and
also the lack of access to the right
opportunities or the right platforms
where we can make a difference in our
own capacity was absent so a bunch of
forty sixth graders and I sat down to
discuss how we can make a difference to
a global refugee crisis amidst the many
intelligent and very feasible options
and solutions that they presented some
of them I want to share them with you
one was let’s ask the Indian Air Force
to go and airlift people in Syria and
bring them to India the second one was
let’s send them that’s back and send
them food clothes medicines and Lego
another one was everybody loves pizza
and ice creams let’s send them pizza and
ice creams and then one female hand went
up and and she was like ma’am Jimmy
write letters to them I smiled and I
told them about letters of love and they
sat down to write incredibly moving
letters one which you can see here
Sahara was kind enough to write down his
roll number and his division as well
as soon as I got down with class and I
got back to the staff room I opened my
laptop and suddenly there was a sub team
of letters of love that was formed and
the educational wing of letters of love
unfurled we got together to develop
empathy centric curricula which teachers
could adopt in classrooms which would
raise awareness cultivate compassion and
also highlight the potential of each and
every child as a change agent in the
society a lot of teachers who got to
know of it by word of mouth used the
curriculum in their classrooms and the
results were so fascinating in fact the
teachers were so amused with the empathy
quotient of their students now
incidentally it was the same year unit
sure got back to us with a request for
13,000 letters for not just Syrian
refugee children but also Iraqi and uzd
refugee children as totally a testimony
to the fact that happiness is contagious
all that went into January 1st 2017
looked like this the summer of 2017
found me working as a counselor at seeds
of peace international camp the same
summer camp which my boyfriend went to
when he was a child the same summer camp
where Chris worked at Chris being the
wonderful person who believed in the
idea at its nascent stage now since this
piece is a it’s an American nonprofit
that creates generations of leaders from
conflict countries through peace
building and conflict transformation we
invite exceptional teenagers from
conflict countries of India Pakistan
Afghanistan Israel Palestine Jordan
Egypt as well as children from the UK
and the USA and it it works in a
traditional summer camp model where the
children are made to share living and
eating spaces with each other
engage in immersive dialogue process and
actually interact with the so called
other so in my bunk one cold night my
Israeli camper woke up in the middle of
the night and put on her blanket over
her freezing bunkmate a Palestinian the
next day morning my palace
can perform the act all whelmingly kind
for she couldn’t find the right words to
tell her and can be in gratitude so
daniela decided to make it special and
took help of her Israeli friends and
wrote a letter in Hebrew for Noga she
gave the letter to Naga hugs followed
tears followed and so did an idea hey
Pooja do you think we can work out
something like a pen pals between our
Israeli and Palestinian schools you know
the problem with Israelis and
Palestinians is that we don’t talk we
don’t know the other side so maybe if we
can use your letters it would be a great
idea and we wouldn’t have to hate each
other blindly anyway can we do that now
what I learnt and what I stand by in my
very humble experience with children
up-to-date is the fact that when kids
come to you with motivated ideas
excluding passion you do not say no
because it was a delight to see them
break out of their chrysalis and bloom
into butterflies and just run the world
the peripheral project was initiated
with the objective of fostering
impossible friendships and also to
encourage rich exchange of perspectives
we do not want to dive into the conflict
setting right at first so we wanted a
smaller known drew so we had students in
Bombay write letters to children who are
victims of war in Syria those under
siege in Gaza Palestine as well as
Syrian refugee children in Turkey the
best part they were all right back
I got back from camp by mid-august back
to India to an array of emails from a 13
year old Alaskan girl I was amused and
the subject read please help me make a
difference
Gabi wheeze had also contacted almost
all the organizations I had worked with
prior to seeds of peace even called up a
few of my bosses and there she was she
it so happened that I immediately got in
touch with her and she was like puja
please help me make a difference this is
my story
Gabi when she was 11 years old saw a
couple of videos online and was very
disturbed with what she solved the
Syrian war and the refugee crisis and
decided to make a difference
she mobilized her community and her
school to collect so many hundreds and
letters to be sent to Syrian refugee
children now she gonna know where to
send it to or whom she could possibly
ask for guidance
a simple Google search led her to the
letters of love Facebook page and there
she was talking to me please help me
make a difference
the choice of her words in the email
subject really inspired me profoundly
now there’s no dichotomy of thought and
action here this was a 13 year old very
aware of a crisis
she ideated on her empathy and decided
to do something about it and in fact had
the project ready in hand she was just
looking for a platform and a mentor it
was Gabi’s energy and enthusiasm that
gave where to the student ambassador
program of letters of love where we hold
young leaders who have ideas and who
have the energy to conduct and to
execute it in their communities both
globally and locally on a global sphere
they send letters to refugee children
and in a local sphere they address
marginalized and vulnerable communities
depending upon the demographic they are
situated in so that would be writing
letters and connecting communities with
the students and homeless people LGBTQ
people the war veterans prisoners or as
of recently the Parkland mass shooting
survivors in Florida all of what went
now in retrospect it was a staffer story
that I heard at a morning assembly when
I was a child that gave birth to an idea
an idea over the span of three years and
only nine working months helps people in
connecting with 30,000 Syrian Iraqi UCB
Palestinian Rohingya Afghan and Kurdish
refugee children empowered more than 200
teachers sensitized more than 8,000
children conducted more than 350 penpal
facilitations had raised around 6500
dollars through crowdfunding hard
collaborations with more than 40
organizations effectively engaged more
than 20,000 youth across 19 countries
and is now a member of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
which refugees coalition the United
Nations sustainable development
solutions news network as well as the
United Network of youth peace builders
in The Hague now what baffled me more
than these targeting statistics is the
fact that this school mate whose name I
know not of whose awareness whose whose
existence I’m not aware of her choice in
choosing this particular anecdote gave
rise to a global massive change movement
a typhoon of kindness I’d love to leave
you with that thought and these smiling
faces it helped create thank you very
very much
thank you ma’am
a small urge to make a difference was
the first building block of an inspiring
cause like letters of love what a
sublime example of the butterfly effect
we would now request our honorable Vice
Chancellor sir to kindly present a
memento as a token of appreciation to miss
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