Riley has never been afraid to go big for clean water. Once, after learning that (at the time) 5,000 kids were dying every day due to lack of clean water, they/she wrote out 5,000 tallies to visualize the crisis and asked for donations to fund a well. Next came The Riley Project, in which she convinced her family to eat rice and beans every night for a month and donate the grocery savings to clean water. Then came birthday campaigns, speaking engagements, and a second iteration of The Riley Project (this time with sandwiches).
Today, Riley is in college—and they’re still not afraid to go big to change the world.
I’m living in D.C. and interning on Capitol Hill. That’s where this has led me to. And I think that’s probably true for every child when you support their passion to change the world. It’s going to evolve into even more meaningful things as they get older.
It doesn’t have to mean that they become President; it can mean that they become a social worker. It can mean being a stay-at-home mom who takes care of their own children and fosters them into world-changers. I think that when you support children with their desires to change the world—and you don’t tell them that they can’t, but that they can do anything—they will go and do anything.
