Talia will be helping us launch
Huakailani's "Plant Your Butts Here" Campaign nationally via randomkid.org.
Talia Leman Age:14, Waukee, IA
Talia Leman chooses to turn what may seem like obstacles into what she calls “liberators.” For instance, some might say living in a small rural town is an obstacle because of the isolation. But Talia says it became the motivation that led her to the Internet and to email, so she could create a larger community for herself.
In fact, it was through the web that Talia started her organization, where kids, schools and youth groups write to her through the web site. She unifies their fundraising efforts with similar goals and develops other ways to raise money. “My journey began in 2005,” says Talia “after I rallied kids from 4,000 school districts across the USA to unify their fundraising efforts for Katrina/Rita relief. ABC News reported that American school children, rallied by my effort, ended up reporting more than $10 million, ranking in their giving power with the top five U.S. corporations.
“Wanting to harness that kid power for the other disasters the world faces, I started my own non-profit called RandomKid, with the tagline ‘The Power of ANYone.’ In two years, I have worked with kids from all 50 U.S.A. states and 19 countries. I have raised approximately $350,000 and have directly and indirectly worked with close to 10,000 child-benefactors, impacting their lives, and the lives of more than 7,000 beneficiaries globally.”
Talia draws inspiration from role models famous and close to home. She lists Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, and anthropologist/gorilla expert Jane Goodall, as people who she believes aimed to inspire others. “Another powerful role model for me is my grandfather Henryk, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland,” Talia says. “When I asked him, ‘Why do you always insist on paying the bill whenever you go out for dinner with other people?’ he answered me very simply, ‘Because I can.’ That is my motto now for everything. Why do what I do? Because I can.
“Nearly every member on my father’s side was killed in the Holocaust. My brother and I are the last ‘Lemans’. Some may think I should be frightened about life, because I know how my family was murdered. But because of that I feel the need to ‘never stand idly by’, as Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said. Because of this, I am liberated to know how important it is to stand up to injustice.”
In school, Talia is soaring academically. She’s in the top one percent in a talented and gifted magnet school, earning the highest GPA possible, a 5.0. She’s been on the principal’s list every year since 2006, and won best in class at the academic science fair in 2007 and 2008. She plans to become a physician, working, she says, wherever medical care is needed most.
One issue that Talia is particularly passionate about is the lack of clean drinking water in many areas. “One billion people do not have access to safe, clean drinking water,” she says, “leading to the death of a child every eight seconds; 25,000 people die each day from hunger; 72 million children are unable to go to school because they live in poor and war torn areas; and the list goes on. There is really no choice except to bring our skills fully to the world to change these awful statistics.”
