by Rainn Wilson
We were honored to be a part of it and help tell Zach’s story.
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During our first year producing videos for the SoulPancake YouTube channel we had a very important discussion. Devon Gundry brought up the fact that our channel needed more “joy,” and that the bringing of joy to our viewers was part of the service that SoulPancake needed to provide. It was our mission to break through the dark cynicism of the Internet with pure unadulterated upliftment (is that even a word?).
Bobby Miller, our resident Internet savant/YouTube channel manager, pointed out a couple of low-rent videos by an outrageous personality in rural Tennessee, “Kid President.” Robby Novak was a nine-year-old boy in Henderson, Tennessee, who, along with his brother-in-law, the outrageously talented writer and director Brad Montague, had started to make some very charming videos with an outrageous persona. Their first video, in which Robby played the part of Kid President in his cardboard Oval Office, had only a few hundred views. We invited them to join SoulPancake, and a few months later, we produced his infamous “Pep Talk” video, which spread like wildfire across a myriad of Facebook pages and has gained over thirty-five million views to date. An Internet star was born. One who has gained almost one hundred million video views, cowritten a bestselling book, and acted in ten episodes of his own TV show. His inspirational videos for moms, graduates, teachers, and kids are brilliantly set up as silly State of the Union addresses with stop-motion animation, non sequitur humor, and heartfelt messages woven in. He’s met and interviewed President Obama and Beyoncé, as well as dozens of top film and music stars. He’s helped the homeless by collecting over fifty thousand clean socks with the “Socktober” campaign and (with ConAgra) helped donate two million meals to food banks across the country. Most important, Kid President’s messages of hope and inspiration have touched millions of hearts and created millions of smiles. All this coming from a joyous young star who has suffered more than anyone can possibly imagine.
You see, by age eleven young Robby Novak had broken more bones than you AND everyone you know put together. The radiant little boy with that gigantic heart and contagious laugh tragically suffers from what is known as brittle bone disease and has had over seventy broken bones in his short life. I find it incredibly touching and beautiful that someone whose life’s goal was to make the world more awesome has suffered so much pain. Ah, life.
My Favorite Kid President Quotes
“Create something that will make the world more awesome.”
“Treat everybody like it’s their birthday.”
“If you can’t think of anything nice to say, you’re not thinking hard enough.”
“Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody.”
“Give the world a reason to dance!”
“Us humans are capable of war and sadness and other terrible stuff. But also CUPCAKES!”
“Love changes everything so fill the world with it!”
“Grown-ups who dream are the best kinds of grown-ups.”
“Don’t be IN a party. BE a party.”
And my personal favorite,
“Mail someone a corn dog.”
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I finally revived the name Metaphysical Milkshake and used the title for a philosophical talk show in the back of my 1976 Dodge van with such incredibly diverse and brilliant guests as Mindy Kaling (blech), Russell Brand, Deepak Chopra, Elon Musk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Olivia Wilde. All these guests were so articulate and insightful (except for Kaling, who just kept checking her phone the whole time). There have been many other SoulPancake hit digital shows along the way, such as Impress Me, The Science of Happiness, and Have a Little Faith, and our little media company with a heart of gold keeps plugging along.
What we do touches people’s hearts. There’s nothing better in this world. I remember running into a young, excruciatingly shy SoulPancake fan at an unnamed conglomerate coffee chain who, halting and embarrassed, told me that he had suffered from depression his whole life, but one thing that helped him get through the day was watching a SoulPancake video every single morning for the past two years. That was one of the most satisfying conversations I’ve ever had in my life. But I still made him buy me a five-dollar decaf soy latte with nonfat vanilla. I gotta be me.
It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, being a mission-driven company, balancing profit and heart. All difficulties aside, however, being able to connect the dots between creativity and devotion in an intimate way on SoulPancake has been richly personally satisfying. The concept of the “individual investigation of truth,” which was so crucial for me in my own spiritual and artistic journey in my twenties, had now perfectly culminated in what we created on the Web. It felt humbling and gratifying to bring to life an actual tool that could aid young people on their own life’s journey toward finding what was true for them. Perhaps they won’t have to go down as many painful detours, with substances and self-imposed hurt, as I did at their age.
But there’s another event that deepened these two aspects of my life to an even greater degree.
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Like many other actors before me, I suppose, when I was starting to get well-known for my work, I was suddenly approached by dozens of nonprofits. Physicians for Social Responsibility, UNICEF, Libertarians for Somalia, Kitten Cancer League, Tree Huggers Who Hug Other Tree Huggers, Save the Grubworm, Kill the Grubworm, Sex Toys for Tots, the Union of Lisping Cyborgs, you name it. They wanted me to be a spokesperson, a board member, to speak at an event or MC a gala dinner or to just plain pony up some money.
I didn’t want to blithely just say yes or no to all of these amazing and worthwhile causes without serious consideration. I wanted to deeply reflect on what role I could play as a minor television celebrity in relation to charity work and how I could best “give back.”
When I reflect on my life and how much selfish career obsession I wallowed in during my youth, I wish that I had begun working in service to others at a much earlier stage. I mean, you don’t need to be on television to start helping people. What a disgusting thought. I did occasionally volunteer or teach at inner-city schools, but it was piecemeal at best. There was a lot I could and should have given in my twenties and thirties. I think this happens a lot in our culture. People often think: If I can make X amount of money a year, once I have a family and a career, THEN I can give to others, but right now I’m focusing on my career and social life. This way of thinking, which I stupidly followed for years, is utter nonsense. Anyone at any time can participate in making Earth and humanity better by giving of themselves and their time.
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But back to the moment at hand. Where did I want to put my time, energy, and resources? There was a tremendous opportunity for me to lend my voice to a cause. But what cause specifically? And why? It all felt a bit overwhelming.
That’s when I heard from the Mona Foundation. Mona supported education internationally and its founder, Mahnaz Javid, knew my dad back in Seattle in the eighties. I was intrigued and started to dig in deeper. I read through its website and dug into its annual reports. What I found truly resonated with me and Holiday.
I realized that education was everything. Personally, it had obviously impacted my life to an incredible degree, but the more research and soul searching I did, the more connected to that fact I became. If one wants change in the world, education is the key. If you want to help with the environment, poverty, water issues, nutrition, global warming, hunger, women’s issues, or discrimination, it is only through education that real change can be effected.
Also, education isn’t “charity.” I’ve come to despise that word. Charity implies giving out something to people who are less fortunate. It implies “we have” and “you don’t have.” There’s a sense of pity attached to doling out to the poor. Education empowers. It uplifts. It allows the student to learn to give to themselves and their family, country, an
d community with self-respect and self-determination. Charity makes people dependent. Education makes them independent.
What was fascinating about the Mona Foundation was its commitment to grassroots education. It would find locally inspired educational initiatives that were already working and help those schools to grow over the years through long-term partnerships. The Mona schools had a commitment to the education of women and girls, a commitment to local sustainability, and, most important, a commitment to service in the community.
As opposed to the American model of education charities in developing countries, which was to plunk down in the middle of a poor place, build a fancy school, and try to get the students into top Western universities, the Mona model was to locate and assist preexisting schools that were already successfully serving their localities, run by a local board and having a commitment to uplifting both the country and their surrounding neighborhoods.
After doing many fund-raisers and interviews in support of Mona, Holiday and I got the chance to go down to Haiti to visit several of the Mona schools in late 2009. We were blown away.
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The poverty was like none I’d ever seen before. I’d traveled a great deal in Central America. Been to Morocco and the Middle East as well. I’d seen much poverty in my travels but not anything close to what I saw in rural Haiti. It was like a chunk of the poorest Africa was dropped down on the end of a Caribbean island. Garbage was everywhere. Everything seemed broken. There was rampant unemployment and the most basic hygiene was impossible to maintain. It was a devastating experience to witness. And yet an inspiring one.
Holiday and I were instantly enamored of and taken with the Haitian people. Through the tremendous difficulties there, the Haitians rose tall. They had a vibrant culture, a beautiful language, and a fierce nobility and independence. We fell in love with Haitian arts and the indomitable spirit of the people. They were tough, bighearted, and funny as hell. We knew we wanted to be a part of Haiti in some way, shape, or form. It’s a magical place, and people who visit fall in love with it.
Then came the Goudou-Goudou, the newly minted Creole word that onomatopoeia-dically symbolized the rolling shake of the great earthquake. On January 12, 2010, over the course of forty-five seconds, approximately two hundred thousand people died, three hundred thousand were injured, and more than a million were displaced. The hotel we had recently stayed at in Port-au-Prince was completely demolished, everyone inside crushed.
The world sat up and took notice of the disaster in a really positive way, and out of that unspeakable devastation some change and help seemed to be on its way to Haiti.
You all know the story of Sean Penn and his work in Haiti after the quake. It’s indescribable what that man was able to do. Love him or hate him, the facts are that Sean formed J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO) and saved thousands of lives, built tens of thousands of shelters, cleared hundreds of tons of rubble, and distributed medicine and hope throughout the country. Even now, the organization continues its amazing work and has single-handedly transformed a huge segment of the capital.
Six months after the quake, Holiday was invited to J/P HRO to do arts workshops with adolescent girls in the tent camps as part of a program sponsored by the United Nations and Full-Circle Learning. I was allowed to tag along and teach, but I was quietly skeptical. Why would adolescent girls without jobs, shoes, roofs, or food benefit from doing drama, photography, creative writing, and visual arts? They needed job training and pants and fresh water, not theater games, poetry, and pretty pictures.
Boy, was I wrong. The girls came in shy, insecure, timid, and filled with fear. Teenage boys from the surrounding tents gathered around the “community center” that had been built for us (a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot mud patch surrounded by a wood fence and a straw roof, with chickens, pigs, and naked babies running around under our feet) and jealously jeered as the girls filed in to do the work.
One of the most eye-opening experiences was when we asked the girls some personal questions about themselves in a simple getting-to-know-you exercise. One of the questions was “What is your favorite color?” With the boys leaning in over the fence, the girls were shamefaced and quiet. As they attempted to answer we had a powerful realization. NO ONE HAD EVER ASKED THEM WHAT THEIR FAVORITE COLOR WAS BEFORE!!!
You see, in Haiti, as in many other lower-income countries, women for the most part are treated as work animals. Starting around age nine or ten they do all the cooking and cleaning, child rearing, water fetching, and selling in the market. Women and girls are the lowest priority to get an education in a family and often are doing the difficult work in the fields while the men and boys sit around and talk or play soccer with an old tennis ball. More than a third of Haitian girls are victims of sexual abuse and violence, and they are often pregnant by the time they’re in their early teens.
Because of the cultural station of women, very rarely are girls asked even their most basic opinions or feelings or what they might care about. The educational system in Haiti is exactly the same as it was about a hundred years ago, with a lot of repetition and rote exercises that don’t foster creativity.
So when we spent an intensive two weeks teaching the arts, creativity, and individual expression to forty brilliant young Haitian women, they truly bloomed with the work and the attention. By the final day, when they invited their families to view their artwork and photos, hear their stories and poems, and watch their theater presentation, the girls had truly transformed. They proudly disregarded the catcalling boys at the fence. The frail, insecure girls who had filed in two weeks earlier were now standing tall, sharing their work with a newfound confidence and power. And beaming faces. We knew we were onto something.
After getting many of them scholarships for furthering their schooling or vocational training, we discussed continuing the work on a greater scale along with our friend Dr. Kathryn Adams. Holiday is an insightful creative writing teacher who really knows how to coax out the genius in adolescent girls, and with my experience teaching acting, improv, and theater games, we knew we had something to offer. The idea of using the arts as a tool to empower adolescent girls, teach literacy, and help them begin their educational journey was the inspiration behind the foundation we created in 2013, Lidè.
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Lidè currently serves almost five hundred at-risk girls in rural Haiti with a staff of thirteen Haitian teachers. (It should be noted that almost all girls in rural Haiti are “at risk.”) We partner with local grassroots educational initiatives and offer our program as a way to help adolescent girls find their voice through the arts as well as provide scholarships, tutoring, and support for their future education.
There have been numerous studies suggesting that one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty is through the education of women and girls. It’s one of the best returns on investment in the developing world, but sixty-six million girls worldwide are not enrolled in school. Educated women spread what they’ve learned to their families and villages and children. Educated girls get pregnant later, have fewer children, and have a far lower infant mortality rate. Educated women and girls have greater power to determine their own fate; earn more; live a rich, fulfilled life; and give back to their communities at a greater level.
I can’t express the deep gratitude Holiday and I feel around being able to share the arts in a way that might be helpful to the incredible young women of Lidè. It puts everything in deep perspective.
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For an even greater perspective, let’s check out this poem by Esther Lajoie, who is fifteen years old, works on a farm, and is a student at Lidè. The students were asked by my wife as a writing prompt to compose a poem from the perspective of the sky.
I See the Sky
Yes.
I see the sky.
I see that sky looking at me
I see the sky as a great river
I see
the sky as a giant tree
that sways with the wind as a rain falls
I see the sky
Yes, I see the sky
I see the sky as the poto mitan*
I see the sky as the branches of the mango tree
that lets its mango fall
I talk to the sky
Yes, I talk to the sky
I tell him,
“Look at me to not make a mistake.
Look at me to not be afraid.”
I talk to the Sky
Yes I talk to the sky.
I tell him,
“Never see just my surface. See me.”
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There’s always been this strange kind of disconnect between playing oddball, mostly comedic characters and being a person who views himself as on a spiritual and artistic journey through life. As time goes on I am finding new ways to greater link these two seemingly disparate sides of myself. It was through the creation of SoulPancake and Lidè that so many of my personal passions have been pulled together: comedy and spirituality, entertainment and big ideas, the arts and service to humanity. I’ve been blessed with these two great outlets in my life. With SoulPancake I’ve been able to combine creativity, humor, and service in a tangible, impactful way, and with Lidè, I’ve been able to use the arts to help heal, educate, and transform.
Actually, I should say, three great outlets. Because when I need to get a little crazy, just throw out all the rules, and vent the wild, untamed part of me, I break out my old bassoon. AND. I. ROCK. To quote Jim Morrison: “I am the Bassoon King! I can do ANYTHING!”*