Friday, April 3, 2009

French Inspirations

Today I had the pleasure of sitting in a balcony above the Plaza with three guys my age from France. We talked about how the sun shined, how San Blas has particularly gorgeous views, what we wanted to order for a mid-morning drink and how to change the world. 

Quentin, Martin and Killian, engineers by study, have stopped off in Cuzco from a trip around the world. "Youth shakes the world, three students go round it," they say. Throughout these three friends' studies and travels, they have noticed an impeccable trend; today's youth has dreams and acts on them toward a better good. Today's youth takes action and gives time and energy towards a cause. It's inspiring, they say. So upon graduation, feeling the looming pressures of finding a job, the guys decided they wanted to travel the world before any type of settling down, but they wanted to do it with purpose, with an outcome. They created Youth Planet

The guys travel the world and see the sights, but, in most cities and definitely in each country, they meet up with people serving for a common good--in NGOs or cleaning the environment or any way of acting on a vision. They write articles about these projects and ideas and spread them as they travel the world, taking an idea from Ghana and suggesting it to a similar organization in Bolivia. They want to show youth in action. They want to promote the exchange of proactive ideas through the single idea of us all helping each other out. They want to see the world and the good in it. 

I told them about Peru's Challenge - probably talked their ears off, actually. But sitting there with these new friends who are so interested in projects such as this, who are looking for passion and sweat and broken hearts and the remedies, I can't help but let the facts and goals spill. And I was eager to hear about other organizations they had talked to and if those would want to partner up with us and where I could find these guys on a map next. 

It's a pretty cool idea--traveling the world to, one, figure out the issues others face, the devastating facts and dire situations and two, see how people are stepping up to challenge those facts. You'd come back with a lot more than some good photos. 

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