Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Shane Feldman took over R.D. Parker Collegiate’s Letkemann Theatre Dec. 10 to tell Grade 7 to 12 students about the value of hard work, volunteering and community leadership.
These are some of the biggest underlying values that define Feldman’s student-led charity Count Me In, which he started back in 2008 when he was only 13 years old.
Even though this organization has accumulated over 100 million volunteer hours by 2018, Feldman, now 24, told the audience that the seeds of the Count Me In movement were planted during a bleak period of his life, when he transferred to a new high school for Grade 9 where he didn’t know anybody.
“I had these huge expectations of what high school was going to be like and now that I’m here, it’s actually the loneliest experience I could imagine,” he said. “I wake up in the morning and it feels like I have swallowed this 1,000- pound weight.”
A trip to the guidance counsellor’s office discouraged Feldman from transferring to a different school, and pointed him in the direction of signing up for a variety of extracurricular activities like the radio club instead.
While taking that first step wasn’t easy, Feldman later realized that the fear and social anxiety he felt was just a necessary part of moving forward out of this funk.
“Walking into that first club meeting was ridiculously hard. Walking into another club meeting the next day was actually a little bit easier,” he said. “As soon as I pushed through the fear the first time, the fear of being rejected and alone, everything started to shift. Things got a little easier and when things are easy, you don’t really notice them as much.”
Feldman got to a point where he started adopting his guidance counsellor’s approach by asking his fellow students what they were interested in and how he could help them pursue that goal.
After setting up speaking engagements with an Olympic gold medallist and the cast of Degrassi: The Next Generation, Feldman tried to spread his message of youth empowerment by filling a community theatre in Toronto with 386 students from seven local schools.
“And that was the pilot project that would become Count Me In,” said Feldman. “The next year we planned an even bigger event for over 1,000 students and the programs have just grown and evolved every year since.”
Today, Feldman describes Count Me In as the “largest youth-led organization in the world,” involving 10 million students and hosting programs and school tours for young people in over 100 countries.
Besides school presentations, Count Me In has also branched out into providing mentorship programs, scholarships and organizing events like their Global Student Leadership Summit.
Feldman told the local Thompson students that they can join this movement by simply organizing their own local community events, like a benefit concert or a cultural food festival.
However, he stressed that the only way to succeed in this avenue is by turning thoughts into actions.
“Leadership is about making choices that make an impact,” he said. “It’s not enough to think about the trash on the ground. It’s not enough to think about the sweet old lady you want to hold the door open for. It’s not enough to think about smiling at someone. You actually have to do it.”
To find out more information about Count Me In, check out their website www.cmimovement.com.
