Superstar J.Lo Surprises Vancouver Students at Annual We Day Event

International superstar, J.Lo, surprised more than 20,000 students Wednesday morning at the annual We Day Vancouver celebration. The youth empowering event, held at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, was free to students with ambitious visions to promote and facilitate social change.

Along with Jennifer Lopez and the National Co-Title sponsors RBC and TELUS, We Day brought together some of the most influential musical artists and speakers of our time including, Selena Gomez, Orlando Bloom, Nick Jonas, Mackelmore and Ryan Lewis, Shawn Mendes, and Debby Ryan.

Photo Credit: We Day Facebook

Beginning in 2007, the We Day event acts as an inspirational forum to engage youth in taking a stand on social issues that matter to them. Part of the larger movement, We Act, the global organization empowers young individuals to become active citizens and promote progressive change on a local, national, and global level.

“All I really want you to know is that you are changing the world, I'm not changing the world, you're changing the world and that's amazing,” said actress, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and host of We Day 2014, Selena Gomez. “Please, please just be kind to each other and love and inspire people...the most important thing is that we learn and continue to learn from each other.”

Photo Credit: We Day Facebook

The B.C. Government has announced that it will once again provide $100,000 to the We Act initiative and will continue to encourage students to embrace global awareness.

Education Minister Peter Fassbender made the announcement at a special education breakfast to kick off We Day along with teachers, other educators, superintendents, and school administrators throughout the province.

“One of the goals in our transformation of B.C.'s education system is to encourage students to engage to a greater level with their communities and to develop a global consciousness. We Day gives students an opportunity to put that into practice and help make a better world in the process,” said Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender.

We Day is an initiative of Free the Children, led by co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger. Each student group that attends is asked to make a commitment of one local and one global action throughout the year in order to help create positive change in the world.

Photo Credit: We Day Facebook

“The Ministry of Education has been a great contributor to We Day and the year-long educational program We Act and we want to thank them for their support and their efforts in bringing together students and teachers from more than 650 schools to share in the inspirational message of global change,” said Co-Founder of Free the Children, Marc Kielburger.

Funds accumulated via the We Act movement goes towards resources and campaigning materials in order to take the We Day's inspirational ideas and atmosphere into sustained activation.

Local Kelowna students from the Studio9 School of the Arts participated in the We Day events this morning in Vancouver. The students earned their spots at the We Day event by taking on several Me to We campaigns throughout 2013/14: 22 students and staff helped to collect food for children in our community and raise money to put towards education.

Photo Credit: We Day Facebook