When Talia Leman was just ten years old, she rallied students from four thousand U.S. school districts to report more than $10 million for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Realizing the potential harnessed, she founded RandomKid, a nonprofit organization that brings youth together across the globe, providing them with innovative tools and resources to create positive change. Today RandomKid has unified the efforts of 12 million children bringing aid to four continents. In A RANDOM BOOK ABOUT THE POWER OF ANYONE (Free Press Paperback Original; October 2, 2012; $14.99), Talia Leman—now seventeen and a senior in high school—shows readers how to find their passion and make room for life’s surprises, demonstrating that everyone has what it takes to make a difference for anything that matters to them.
Passionate about the potential we all have inside us, Talia writes, "The truth is, our power comes from being who we are, exactly as we are, and doing what we do, exactly as we are compelled to do it! When you spread value—by generously giving it away from the genuine place of you—people sit up, wake up, and pay attention.”
Writing with infectious enthusiasm, humor, and resoluteness, Talia shares her secrets for being greater than you know how to be, including:
- Sideways is a better way to go forward
- If life gives you lemons, lemonade is just one option
- Too many cooks is the right number
- Purpose happens by accident
- Passion beats perfection
- Mission before brand
- Don’t line up Your Ducks
- It's not about thinking outside the box; it's about not having a box at all
In A RANDOM BOOK ABOUT THE POWER OF ANYONE, Talia explains why there is no better investment than kids. “When you invest in a youth project,” she says, "you are not just investing in their cause, you're investing in them. I discovered when a person gives a dollar to a cause like the earthquake in Haiti, they give a dollar to that cause. But when they give that same dollar to a youth project benefiting that cause, those kids will take that dollar and turn it to $2, $3, $4. . . And sometimes more than $10. That's a 100 to 1000% return.”
In an interview about A RANDOM BOOK ABOUT THE POWER OF ANYONE, Talia Leman can discuss:
- How she was able to raise $10 million when she was just ten years old
- Why her brother Zander—who has an autism spectrum disorder—was the inspiration behind RandomKid
- How to find your passion
- Why investing in a kid who is raising money for charity yields a better return than simply investing in the charity
- How to make a great mistake (and learn from it)
- Why donors are not allowed (and success only happens when everybody wins)
- How to get what you need without asking for a dime
- How to create a message that spreads
- "The Big Return" – a project she launched in St. Louis in October 2011 that leverages the power of local youth to create big change in the world. And how she plans to roll it out to all fifty states
As Talia writes, "Passion can be sourced many ways. Sometimes people change the world because of the empathy they feel, and sometimes they change the world out of curiosity, frustration, or the desire to innovate. With the right tools, your reasons don't matter. You simply can, for whatever inspires you."
For kids, parents, educators, investors, philanthropists, reformers, and activists alike, A RANDOM BOOK ABOUT THE POWER OF ANYONE inspires us to rethink and reimagine what's possible, one random inspiration, one random idea, one random person at a time.
Seventeen-year-old TALIA LEMAN, author of A RANDOM BOOK ABOUT THE POWER OF ANYONE (Free Press Paperback Original; October 2, 2012; $14.99), is a random kid from Iowa. At age ten, struck by images of the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Talia embarked on an accidental journey that rallied students from four thousand U.S. school districts to collectively report more than $10 million for relief efforts, ranking the giving power of youth among the top five U.S. corporate donors. Realizing the potential harnessed, RandomKid was founded, Talia’s nonprofit organization that brings youth together across the globe, providing them with innovative tools and resources to create positive change. Today RandomKid has unified the efforts of 12 million youth from twenty countries bringing aid to four continents, garnering up to a 1000 percent financial return for youth-led causes. Talia’s platform has been recognized by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations as a premiere model for promoting peace; and she has been named the recipient of the national Jefferson Award (called “the Nobel prize for public service”) and honored with the International Youth Talent Award from the European Union. Talia travels the world speaking about “the power of ANYone.”
Talia’s national media appearances include The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CNN and ABC World News Now. An incredibly powerful and inspiring speaker, Talia has addressed audiences all over the world; she’s spoken at Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s Women in the World conference( http://www.livestream.com/womenintheworld/video?clipId=flv_5c1c0b80-3123-4d72-b299-1771727083c2) a TED satellite conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EuPSF-UgQA), the Young Presidents Organization (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6f-zpQQ9hM), done presentations for UNICEF and the United Nations, and gave keynote at the American Association of Fundraising Professional annual conference.
A world-renowned fundraiser, Talia is currently spearheading RandomKid’s The Big Return, a project that launched in St. Louis, Missouri in October 2011. Seeking to leverage the power of local youth to create big change in the world, The Big Return-St. Louis pilot was a huge success. Starting with 247 youth, they rallied 20,000 additional kids, and together they yielded a 911% return on the investment that local corporations provided to them, benefitting more than 100,000 people. They plan to roll out The Big Return to all fifty states. For more information on RandomKid, visit www.randomkid.org.
My Take on the Book
Talk about an inspiring young person! This young woman has done more in her seventeen than most have done in their entire lives. This book brings together many of the great ideas that the author has used to be successful into one location. The book provides the reader with so many great, innovative ideas and resources about how they can change the way that they think about things as well as providing the motivation and inspiration to make the changes that need to be made. The book was so easy to read, and with short, to the point sections, you can easily understand the concepts and bring away so much from the book itself. This book is geared toward all ages and can serve as an inspiration to anyone who is trying to accomplish anything!
All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the company. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Please refer to this site's Disclaimer for more information. I have been compensated or given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions.
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