2nd design of Alice Blackwood from The Validation Project
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2nd design of Alice Blackwood from The Validation Project
First installment of a character headshot sheet I'm making for Validation. I thought it was fitting for the first one to be the mc herself
Her hair is dyed, hence why her eyelashes are brown instead of black :]
She went from being bullied to becoming a teen CEO! Valerie Weisler started a project, at her 14 years old, called The Validation Project so kids and teens likes her could have a voice in the world. Everybody matters but not everybody knows that.
She is such an inspiration to a lot of people and with only 17 y/o is already a CEO and is traveling to a bunch of countries to announce her project and so people can get involve! She is in her last year of high school and works 40 hours p/week on the project that she is paying with her babysitting money and funds from speaking engagements.
I really love when people like her do things like this because it gives you hope about the world again.. You can see such cruelty and violence every day out there but this, this is what’s going to get the world to be a better place!!
If you’ve ever been bullied, you know exactly what Valerie Weisler went through. Instead of letting it get her down, Valerie decided to do something about it.
In January 2013, Valerie started the Validation Project, an organization committed to connecting people and celebrating their differences. “In the beginning, I didn’t really know what our mission statement was, I just knew that if someone had a problem, I wanted to create a group of people who could find a solution to it and make them feel good about themselves,” Valerie says.
The Validation Project was an overnight success. “I had emails from people as near as my next door neighbor saying that they wanted to get involved in it but also from [places like] Uganda and Spain,” Valerie says. “It really just catapulted.”
Currently, the Validation Project works with 5,500 teenagers and 2,000 adults from all over the world. Overall, there are 1,900 chapters in 100 different countries. “I would never think that I could go down a list and look at 196 countries and I have people in 100 of them,” Valerie says.
The Validation Project works with big names such as Google, Seventeen magazine, and Nickelodeon to connect teens with opportunities based off of their interests. For example, if a teen likes to cook, the Validation Project will partner her with a restaurant in her area where she will intern for two months. After the internship, the teen will then do work with community service. And finally, when all of the community service is complete, the teen will officially become a Validator and join the 5,500 other teens in the community.
“That’s what it’s about… We also have different campaigns that all the kids work on, so there’s a girl in Oklahoma who's planning a campaign for domestic violence on Valentine’s Day with a boy in Africa,” Valerie says. “And they’ve never met each other but they’ve been on our team for two years and they’re going to launch this and they’re going to make it something that’s really global.”
The Validation project also works with the National Jefferson Award. “It’s like the Nobel Peace Prize for public service,” Valerie explains. Through this program, Valerie and the Validation Project will even do work with the White House.
Valerie lists Ellen DeGeneres and Hillary Clinton as two of her biggest role models. “She’s the first comedian to be funny but she doesn’t have to put people down to be funny, which I think is super important,” Valerie says about Ellen. As for Hillary, Valerie admires her abilities to break barriers and use her networking skills. “I really look up to her,” Valerie says.
Running a global networking site is no easy task! Valerie spends approximately 45-50 hours a week working on the Validation Project. From 3pm to 11pm, Valerie is all business. “I’ll take calls in the janitor’s closet at school,” Valerie says. “We’re also self-funded right now so when I’m not working on my project, I’m babysitting so we can get merchandise, so we can give money to programs to start and stuff like that.”
The demanding schedule doesn’t discourage Valerie, though. Within the next five years, Valerie wants to see her numbers rise from 5,500 to 5 million. Valerie is optimistic about the future and definitely encourages everyone to pursue their dreams. Valerie says, “If you get those butterflies in your stomach, you’re doing the right thing.”
I think a random act of kindness is so important because it’s something that everyone can do. You don’t need a large sum of money or social status. It doesn’t depend on your geographical location or what ethnicity you come from. It’s within everyone, and they just have to find it within themselves to go up to a person and make their day better. It’s this whole domino effect of kindness that really makes an incredible impact on the world at large.
Valerie Weisler, The Validation Project, in BYOU Magazine