- So today, I want to talk to you all about three keywords.
And if you don't remember anything I say,
and if you don't remember my beauty.
(audience cheering)
At least remember the three words:
community, passion and change.
- Whether it's sharing a destination that I love,
with people that I love, or trying new things
that push me outside of my comfort zone,
or learning about a new culture and embracing it.
To me, that's what traveling with a purpose is.
I'm excited to get out there in the world,
with cameras rolling, to show a new side of the Points Guy,
and inspire you to share your meaningful moments.
This is what meaningful travel means to me.
In this episode, we're gonna spend time
with wildly impressive, Nobel Peace Prize winners:
Rigoberta Menchú and Leymah Gbowee,
during two of the most meaningful trips of my year.
(audience cheering)
- At the Points Guy, we've been sponsoring
PeaceJam for four years now.
PeaceJam is a year-long program.
Basically an after school program with teachers and mentors.
They do service projects and they learn
about Nobel Peace Prize winners who travel around the world,
and inspire them to make their communities better.
- The curriculum is really unique in the sense
that it centers on the life and the work
of these Nobel Peace Prize winners.
You think about the Dalai Lama,
what was he doing as a little boy,
and how did that impact who they became.
How do you transform the troubles
in your life into a purpose?
- In every region and every year,
we have the PeaceJam conference,
where a Nobel Peace Laureate comes to the conference,
where they actually get to meet the students in person.
It's an amazing transformative experience
for these youth.
To meet a Nobel Peace Laureate,
and someone they've been studying and learning
about all year long.
- This year, I'm really excited to announce
that we're doing the TPG Fellows Program,
where nine kids from the PeaceJams we support
in Guatemala, Ghana, and South Africa,
we will personally put through primary school,
or pay for college.
(audience cheering)
- PeaceJam Guatemala was incredibly spiritual,
as always, with Rigoberta Menchú,
but now we're off to one of the most lively
PeaceJam chapters out there, PeaceJam South Africa.
- Who got the power? - We got the power!
(cheering)
- There has been an incredible progress in South Africa
and the optimism you feel in the country is palpable.
We're gonna be there with Leymah Gbowee,
she's one of the most powerful speakers
and people that I know, she won the Nobel Peace Prize
for helping end civil war in Liberia
by bringing together Muslim and Christian women.
She knows how to bring you up and make you feel
like you can change the world.
- Young people, each of you carries a passion,
something that you want to do,
when I was a little girl, I used to dream
and then my dream changed because of the war,
I was dreaming about becoming a pediatrician
and that I would treat children.
When my dream changed, I kept asking myself,
in all of those war years, what else do I have
that I could contribute to the world.
Do you have a talent? Do you have your voice?
Are you like me, nosy, that you can jump
into other people's business and try to
bring common sense to a situation?
We all have special and unique gifts.
How do we use them to build our community?
- Of all the workshops and lectures,
what do you think is the most powerful part of a PeaceJam?
- The first thing I would say is the whole focus
on service, because we don't have that in our world today.
A lot of people feel like everything
should drop on their laps.
That's really really nice that we're telling them,
you have to give back to humanity.
- So today you guys are gonna become entrepreneurs.
You guys are competing against each other to come up
with the best possible business.
Think about the need in South Africa,
think about your community: what products or services
does your community need?
Three or four years ago, PeaceJam asked me
to do a workshop.
While I may not have a Nobel Peace Prize,
I am an entrepreneur, so I did a shark tank style
competition years ago in Ghana
and it was a wild success.
It gives the kids a creative outlet to come up
with a business idea and a plan
to give back to their communities.
(cheering)
- A lot of times people come to speak to young people
and they give them a lot of theory
and never give them the practicality of the life
that they find themselves living.
- I have this plan, I have this idea,
but I don't know how to do it,
I don't know if they are going to believe in me.
How can we solve our community?
How can we do this so that all of us
we can do something?
- Let's give her a hand. (audience clapping)
You know, the problem with your generation
you want to start with 1000 people.
If you take one person in your community
and mentor them to success, you've succeeded.
We have something rich, which is our community,
but we are losing it slowly
and it will take a lot of passion, from all of us,
to create the change that we want to see.
- Peace Jam has shaped me as an entrepreneur,
as a philanthropist.
My goal is to raise awareness of the organization,
so getting TPG readers who aspire to purposeful travel
and meaningful moments involved, whether it's
submitting an act of peace or working
within the local community center where you live
through our One Billion Acts of Peace Campaign,
or coming along, in the future, on some of these trips.
Simply visiting one of these countries
that desperately needs tourism dollars
is an act of peace in itself.
- As you all gather and go out,
find something you are passionate about.
Put your hand together with someone else's hand
and try to create a community that will be proud of you.
You see, every great person, from Mandela to Tutu,
all of them started small.
What are you going to do?