Raffi at University of British Columbia

**Raffi at University of British Columbia** is a program of the 2007 DVD: Raffi Renaissance.

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Chancellor McEachern, President Piper, faculty members, parents and guests, fellow graduates:

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you today—and to receive this wonderful honour from the University of British Columbia. I'm delighted to share this day with so many young adults. Not too long ago, we were singing Baby Beluga together; and now, Beluga Graduates!

I've been privileged to have made music for children and families for 3 decades; grateful for the trust and support they have shown me, and grateful for the gifted musicians who joined me in concert and on my recordings.

You know, as a children's troubadour, I wrote and recorded songs with life affirming imagery, with a positive outlook. And now, in my evolving role as a global troubadour, I still write and record—new songs for older audiences, still celebrating life and the global family.

Currently I am promoting a philosophy I call Child Honouring, a children first approach to restoring communities and ecosystems, based on the idea that how we regard and treat our young is the key to a humane and sustainable society. I see this as an organizing principle for a culture of peace; it's a vision I have shared with luminaries such as the Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall and many others, among them scientists, academics, writers and economists who have embraced Child Honouring as a revolution in values—one that calls for a profound redesign of society around the priority needs of its young.

As a creed that crosses all cultures and faith, Child Honouring calls us to question everything: from child care policies to the right to a living wage; from how we measure economic progress to our stewardship of the planet; from our physical treatment of children to the impact of corporate exploitation on their minds and bodies.

In the rest of my life, I will work to inspire societies to honour their young, to build the social capacity needed for a humane and sustainable world.

To the graduates assembled here today, my congratulations for your hard work and perseverance. May your experience at UBC serve you well as you move forward.

My friends, we live in times of opportunity and peril, times which urgently need our full humanity. Today, 6 billion souls worldwide live in a colossal dilemma: our global home is on fire, its finite resources are stripped by greed, its life support systems—from the great forests to the coral reefs—failing.

We may be the first generation to wonder if we might be among the last. Some say we have 2025 years to decisively set humanities course, to move from destruction to restoration, from the mechanistic view of life to the organic and magical; from a selfish bottom line society where money rules, to a mature culture of social and environmental responsibility.

Or as Nelson Mandela has put it, to turn this world around for the children. For the children.

And universities and their graduates can play important role in this turning. Now, in Harry Potter terms, I would say the situation calls for wizards. In the muggle environment of unsustainable commerce, we need the best wizards we can find. That's where you come in. Because children today are born with toxic chemicals, barely known 50 years ago, and breast milk has become among the most contaminated of foods on the planet, and yet, corporations still target the very young for consumer loyalty from birth.

Let me say to you that business as usual has failed its children, has failed you and your childhood dreams, has ignored the warning signs of a world in trouble. That's why in many countries, millions of people comprising a group referred to as a second superpower, are dreaming of and working towards a different possible world, a vibrant world, a hospitable world for all its children, and for the children you may want to have someday.

The great psychologist Abraham Maslow said: "Healthy individuation requires resisting unhealthy and cultivation." And so, I would say to you: "Keep alive your radical inquiry, resist the consumer hypnosis, the muggle enculturation. Instead, reside in your heart's desire for your life's path. Take your soul to work. Let it infuse all your intentions, live along your highest spiritual values, like the beluga whales who swim wild and free. May you pursue your passions true to your own nature and help to turn this big beautiful planet into the world of our dreams."

Well, in closing, I'd like to sing a song with you.