The world’s largest youth empowerment event, WE Day, is coming to Baltimore for the first-time on April 11, 2018 at the Hippodrome Theatre. WE Day is a live event celebrating social change and bringing together thousands of young people who have made a difference across Maryland.
The inaugural WE Day Community: Baltimore will host 2,000 students and educators from across the state for a powerful, life-changing experience featuring renowned speakers, innovative thought leaders and celebrity performers including Montel Williams, Martin Luther King III, Lizzy Greene, Shawn Hook, Millie Davis, In Real Life, local award-winning published slam poet Mecca Verdell, Rasheda Ali, Celebrity Marauders, The Kenyan Boys Choir, Spencer West and many more still to be announced. Joined by international activist and WE Day co-founder, Craig Kielburger, the exciting lineup will share their passion for change, energize the crowd and motivate young people to continue to take action on pressing issues to affect positive change in their communities and around the world.
“We know young people can lead real systemic change here in Baltimore and across America. Which is why we are passionate about supporting them through the WE organization,” said Adair Newhall, President, Brightside Foundation “What we need is more active citizens working to make our world better and there is no doubt this generation is leading that movement. They are the real heroes and the ones who can foster a philanthropic culture, both globally and locally.”
A catalyst to support the movement of young people leading change, WE Day is a series of 19 stadium-sized events held across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Caribbean. This past year, more than 200,000 students from over 10,000 schools attended WE Day events, alongside thousands who watched online and millions more through two national North American TV broadcasts. Students can’t buy a ticket to WE Day—youth earn their way by the actions they take on one local and one global cause of their choice.
More than a one-day event, WE Day is connected to the free, yearlong service-learning educational program WE Schools, providing schools and community groups with educational resources and tools to take action on the issues affecting their community. WE Schools was first launched in Baltimore in February of 2017, thanks to the generous support of Ashton and Adair Newhall and Brightside Foundation. The program is designed to enhance a school’s existing social initiatives as well as give way to new ones to empower young people to create positive change in the world. WE Schools encourages students to further their curricular learning and develop life skills for success beyond the classroom.
“We are surrounded by youth of the WE generation—a generation that is tuned-in to the needs of their community both globally and locally. They have committed to choosing hope, optimism, empathy and courage over fear, division, apathy and intolerance,” said Craig Kielburger. “We are honored to celebrate the young people from over 150 schools and youth groups from across Baltimore, who have joined together to make a difference and prove that you are never too young to change the world.”
With more to be announced, the initial list of WE Day Community: Baltimore hosts, speakers and performers includes:
Co-Hosts: Millie Davis, Lizzy Greene, Tai Young
Speakers: Rasheda Ali, James Piper Bond, Nardia Boodoo, Grace Callwood, Darius I. Craig, Sarah Hemminger, Craig Kielburger, Martin Luther King III, Dr. Jaqueline Sanderlin, Mecca Verdell, Spencer West, Montel Williams
Performers: Celebrity Marauders, Shawn Hook, In Real Life, The Kenyan Boys Choir
WE Day is free of charge to students and educators across the U.S. thanks to the generous support of partners led by National Co-Title Sponsor The Allstate Foundation. Through its Good Starts Young® initiative, The Allstate Foundation empowers America’s youth with the strength, confidence and skills to step us as leaders and achieve success in their lives.
WE Day is supported in Baltimore by Co-Chairs Ashton and Adair Newhall, founders of Brightside Foundation.
Nationally, WE Day is supported by Co-Chairs Tom Wilson, Chairman and CEO, Allstate; Jane Francisco, Editorial Director of Hearst Lifestyle Group and Editor in Chief of Good Housekeeping; Brett Tollman, CEO, The Travel Corporation; Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever; and Steve Robinson, CEO and Founder, Zilliance; and Janet Crown, CEO, Burn 60 Studios.
About WE Day
WE Day is part of WE – a family of organizations making doing good, doable. WE is made up of WE Charity, empowering domestic and international change, ME to WE, a social enterprise that creates socially conscious products and experiences to help support the charity, and WE Day, filling stadiums around the world with the greatest celebration of social good. WE enables youth and families to better the world – supporting 7,200+ local and global causes by volunteering millions of hours of service, shopping daily with an impact, and raising millions of dollars that directly benefit their local communities and the world. Globally, WE teams in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have provided more than 1 million people with clean water, built 1,000 schools and schoolrooms overseas, and empowered more than 200,000 children with access to education. WE was founded more than 20 years ago by social entrepreneurs, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger. Join the movement today at WE.org.
About The Allstate Foundation
www.allstatefoundation.org/goodstartsyoung