Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Alla Dunaeva
The first TEDxBrookhouseSchool
was organized last year in November,
with an audience of a hundred high school students
from six schools in Nairobi, and a few adults.
When my director asked me to organize this event,
I had no clue what TED or TEDx meant,
and neither did he.
So, I started watching TED talks,
and, in a few days, they most completely hooked.
I picked up a date which happened to be the TEDxYouth day,
and then, asked some staff and students
to come on to my committee,
and together we started showing TED talks to the boarding students
every Friday evening, and then, in a short while,
we started showing at least three talks,
in three different venues in the secondary school,
once in a week, at lunch breaks.
Richard Turere is that inspiration behind this event.
He was only a few weeks old at our school,
when he was asked to participate in TED Talent Search in Nairobi,
and that's actually what got us curious.
So, we asked the students to apply,
if they wanted to be speakers at the event.
Richard was one of our speakers,
together with nine other students --
-- some of them were our students and alumni -- and three performers.
This board was done by one of our speakers,
just a day before the event,
and he asked the audience to go define themselves,
during the break, on that wall.
That's how the wall looked like, at the end of the event.
TEDxBaltimore featured his video earlier this year,
and got him to speak to their audience on Skype.
We only involved the secondary students at our event.
Though, I had to introduce the idea to the prep school.
So, these kids said they wanted to be more involved,
and what we did is start a club this year.
We have 15 members, aged between 10 to 12,
and we meet every Wednesday, watch TED talks
and hold some very good discussions with them.
Another good, positive response is that the students at our school
asked if they could support Richard's project,
so we'd be raising funds and getting the kids to go install
the land lights themselves.
What was our greatest challenge is what I faced organizing this event.
I found myself introducing a completely new thing
to a very busy environment.
So, I did not get very quick results.
I could not create a very quick excitement,
especially amongst the teaching staff, who are very busy.
That posed a problem, because I needed people
who could start working with the kids, training the speakers.
But I got a few people who were willing to do it,
though they didn't have a lot of time with them.
But, two weeks to the event,
I got a lady who had spoken at TEDxMidAtlantic,
and she volunteered to work with the kids
and that worked very well for me.
It was also not very easy to get a filmmaker who could work with us
according to the requirements of ... of TED,
and I only got someone who could do it the night before the event.
What worked very well for me,
the many, many well detailed websites of TEDxYouth events
became my toolkit.
TEDx community was also very helpful.
I spoke a lot to Nate and Sarge Salman, of TEDxBaltimore,
and I always knew that they were just an e-mail away.
I also had a very supportive school management.
They funded the whole event,
so I didn't have to go looking for sponsors.
And I also had a very enthusiastic group of kids,
who, I mean, from the minute I introduced the idea,
they went full swing, they would put up posters,
get the kids to go watch the TED talks
and, yes, our vision now is to hold more events in the future.
Thank you.
(Applause)