“We could live some hours with no food or no water. But we can’t live with no hope.”
World Merit Fellowship Program 2014. Day Four. The World Merit Day. Indeed this is not a normal day. We received more than 1.000 people in the Echo Arena in Liverpool to learn. We were there to listen inspiring people with interesting skills and great sense of purpose and leadership.
Ken Robinson, Malala, Katie Piper, Mike Southon, Lord Hastings and Andy Bound.
Besides the many ideas we heard this day, I kept one thing shared by Katie Piper:
“ We could live some hours with no food or no water. But we can’t live with no hope.”
Katie has an impressive story. She’s a young woman who has rebuilt her life after surviving a brutal attack in March 2008 at the age of 24, in which she was raped and had sulphuric acid thrown in her face. She spent two months in the Burns Unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where she was placed in an induced coma in intensive care. She speech was quick but still inspiring.
After the event, we still had the chance to see Malala personally and I could see a simple and brave girl with deep hope in her eyes.
Next we got 8 minutes to change clothes and meet some nice people who social entrepreneurship is already part of their lives. Actually I was pretty nervous for this formal dinner in the beginning — it was an amazing opportunity and I wanted to make the best of it.
In the end, it couldn’t be better. The World Merit Day was fantastic, the dinner was amazing, the people were nice and our team and Fellows did an excellent job, preparing the event and speaking to everyone, respectively.