In November, we got to meet to super vibrant Henry Pao, a 15 years old, secondary student from Pui Ching Middle School. He has participated in Design For Change (DFC) for 3 years and has become a member of the DFC student council since the BTC Taiwan 2018. That was a two-day event sponsored by DFC that drew thousands of participants from around the world and was mainly organized by children. 

Design For Change is a global movement that cultivates the ‘I Can’ mindset in every child. DFC uses the 4 simple steps of Design Thinking: (1) Feel, (2) Imagine, (3) Do, and (4) Share. 

Pao and his teammates have been doing a project about “Caring the elderly”. They began this project in April in 2019 and they have already designed two workshops for the elderly. They are now planning the third workshop for the elderly.

This is a young man with some big accomplishments to come. But let’s take a look at his vision.

The Vision:  Feel for the elderly. Imagine what you can do to help. Do it. Share the results.

In Macau, there are many elderly people living alone. Why this is so is not entirely clear, but for some reason, their family, either their kids or relatives, may not visit them very often. This will cause them to feel very lonely and it induces in them a lack of confidence in their future.

The typical reaction for the elderly suffering from loneliness is that they start feeling useless. That their life is meaningless. No reason to go on living. This is a serious problem so Henry and his team decided to take action. They did just that.

The team made a project called “Caring the elderly”. They designed workshops for those elderly. All based on their ability.

For example, one of the workshops was all about cooking. During that workshop, the elderly taught teenagers how to cook. This helped them to regain their confidence in themselves. Suddenly they could see that they had the ability to transfer knowledge and wisdom. They took back the power to teach others.

The project is aimed at empowering the elderly and this workshop was the perfect example of the outcome Henry and his team were seeking.

Simply put, empowering those elderly and let them realized that they are not meaningless, in fact, they have the ability to teach others and even educate the next generation. Moreover, they shared the idea that everyone is equal, including the elderly. 

Henry Pao tells us the following when you ask him why: “Try to imagine when you become an 80 years old elderly person and you are still getting along with those young people, sharing with them your life experience. How wonderful the community will be. That’s the future my team wants to shape. And that’s how I shape my future.”

Needless to say that Henry and his team are focused on Sustainable Development Goal n. 10, especially, reducing inequality within and among countries.

DESIGN for CHANGE is the largest global movement driven by children who believe that ‘every child can’ Design for Change reaches 35 countries, over 300,000 schools and 25 million children with a belief that ‘I CAN’.