Listen, I am a crier. I cry at everything: Dog-solider reunion videos. Cake falling off the counter. Those commercials they always show during the Olympics about the parents watching their children succeed.
Today, I can add "rap videos produced by Irish children who want to save the planet" to the list of things that will make me cry happy tears, then sad tears, then happy tears again.
A group of children at the Cappabue National School in Cork, Ireland, got together and decided to tackle climate change. They got the idea after spending time cleaning up their local beaches in 2019 to collect material for an environmental competition. The cleanup shocked the children, who didn't realize they would collect so much litter and garbage.
The classmates decided to turn the litter they collected into a 3D art installation they called "Moby's Sick," and it ended up winning the competition. After they were finished with the project, the kids couldn't stop thinking about what habits we could all change to become more environmentally conscious people. The kids were so into the topic that they ended up introducing a new environmentally friendly habit into their classroom each day.
These habits included bringing stainless steel drink containers to school instead of disposable containers and installing a filtered water cooling system. They even got the whole school to start using biodegradable cups for milk instead of individual plastic bottles.
But they weren't stopping there! Since Cappabue National School is a filmmaking school, everyone felt that the school's film project for the year should be about climate change. So in November 2019, they began recording their music video with Garry McCarthy, director of GMCBeats, a music studio that offers music production workshops. The kids came up with the whole song themselves, and they ended up with the song "One Small Change."
The kids traveled around to a few beautiful spots to put the video together, and the end result is pretty awesome.
