The Pen Project
A Stimulating Journey for a Pleasant Destiny
I online purchased several books last year and one of the book is called “What I Wish to Knew When I Was 20” written by Tina Seelig. She is is an American educator serving at Stanford University, an entrepreneur and author of several books on creativity and innovation. I was really intrigued and fascinated reading the first page of the book and within 2 days completed reading the book.
One of the important points that interest me is the story of Kyle Macdonald, which appeared in page 5 of the book. The guy successfully converted a red paper clip to a house by barter trading the item in his possession to a higher value added product — 14 times, in a space of one year.
Last Saturday, after a breakfast with my family in a local restaurant nearby our house, I suddenly thought of challenging my kids to do something similar to Kyle Macdonald. I threw the idea to four of them, Ikhwan (20), Marsya (18), Alya (17) and Zara (10) and challenge them to convert a new blue ball pen worth MYR0.55 per piece (USD 0.15 per piece).
Later that afternoon, I assembled all of them at our living hall and officially explained the challenge and gave each of them a pen. The challenge is to convert or barter trade the pen as many possible until it reaches the highest value possible. I shared the story of Kyle Macdonald to motivate and convince that it anything impossible and amazing can happen. The duration of the challenge is 1 year, that is from 18th March 2022 until 17th March 2023.
I created a video to seize the official moment of the challenge which I spoke in my mother tongue language. Nevertheless the video description and also our actions in the video could be easily understood (check out the video below). I plan to update all of the transactions made by my kids at least one time every 7 or 14 days, depending on my availability and progress.
My main goal for challenging my kids is to develop all of the important soft skills such as communication, critical thinking and entrepreneurship skills. I also want them to start gaining confidence and believe that they can do it if they really focus on their goals.
Do follow me to keep updated with the progress. See yea!
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