Engaging the Planet Protector Alliance with Vanessa LeBourdais of DreamRider Productions — Ripples of Radical Generosity

One of the things that we learned was that our programs don't just have an environmental impact. Our programs were making kids happy and calm. And so that's something that we measured during COVID because we're teaching them, even though they're alone, that they're part of something. They're part of the Planet Protector Alliance that goes all around the world and everybody is needed. Your own superhero power, which you may not know what it is yet, is needed.

Welcome to the sheo.world podcast, where you will meet women who are transforming the world to be more equitable and sustainable. Your host for today's podcast is the founder of SHEEO, Vicki Saunders. Welcome to sheeo.world.

Welcome, Vanessa. I'm so excited to talk to you today.

I'm really excited to be here, Vicki. Thank you for having me.

So tell us about what you're working on, why you're doing it, why it's needed.

Well, I'm working on— really what I'm working on is shifting the culture of the world to one of kindness and interconnection with the planet. That's my ultimate goal. Uh, the way that I'm doing that is through engaging kids as changemakers who change their families and grow up with this deep value of interconnectedness, kindness, and so forth. And the way that I'm doing that is through interactive digital media that reaches kids through schools. I started this— I kind of need to go back to my early 20s when I moved from Toronto to By intuition, I ended up in Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island that I'd never even heard of before I got there, and then discovered it was a beautiful wilderness. And I lived in a place with the rainforest as my backyard, with cougars and eagles and, and things. And, uh, one day my landlady, without warning, clear-cut the rainforest and turned it into a parking lot. And when I watched the stumps burn, that is the moment that I had where I was transformed into a lifetime environmentalist. And I joined the about 10 or so other young people in their 20s who also didn't really know what we were doing but were determined to fight the multinational corporations that were clear-cutting the region, the bio-region. And that's when I started writing songs because I was a musical theater performer, so naturally we needed songs to make this good. And about 2 years later, we were joined by about 8,000 people and it became a UN Biosphere Reserve. And my songs became the songs of the movement as well. I was an organizer as well, but that's where my environmental and arts connection first began. And I went to Vancouver to become a musical theater performer again, which kind of struck me as weird, but again, it was following my intuition, so I trusted it. And met my partner, who was also a performer. We ended up working with the City of Vancouver who had an engineer who'd gone to theater school, and they wanted to create a play for kids. So that is really the beginning of Dreamwriter. We made a play for kids on water conservation, and that grew by word of mouth until we were working with municipalities all over the region. So 13 different municipalities and 50,000 kids a year. And, um, about 10 years ago— so this is a long story told in short form— about 10 years ago, I was realizing that we were having such an impact on kids that we heard all the time about how, from parents, that their kids were changing their families. Oh, my kids saw your show and now we're all conserving water. My kids saw your show, now we're composting. And that was just at the beginning of digital media and, you know, where people started having cameras in their hands. And so I thought, why don't we see if this will work in a video? And it, well, kids really enjoyed videos, they were looking in their bodies like zombies. So we were like, how can— that's not going to do anything. They're not going to run out of this room and change anything when they look like that. So how can we create a scalable digital experience instead? So we designed an experience first, and then we had it led by digital media. So now we have these superhero characters, Esmeralda, Planet Protector, and her sidekick, Goober, who go after supervillains like the Evaporator. And then Esmeralda turns to the camera and says, to the kids, welcome to the Planet Protector Academy. You are all apprentices and this is real life. And so each week kids go home on missions and it really works. It's worked across the country and internationally. And so this is my method of using my arts and my passion to hopefully one day change the culture of the world or help to.

Yeah. I'm like just tingling all over because this is all the stuff I want to do and have been doing too.

I know.

Give me an example of one of the weekly— or is it weekly or like monthly?

Yes, weekly.

Yeah, so one of the weekly tasks that occur and what happens? What's the call to action?

Oh, well, a simple task is, for example, convincing your parents to drive less, so to walk to school, for example. And we actually work backwards from there and we think like, what does a kid need to know, but how do they also need to feel like, you know, in order to actually want to do that, how do you need to feel? And I think that's one of the places that we differentiate, is that we're really based in emotions and feeling and experience and fun, and we want to make it as fun as possible. And then what happens then is like 90% of the kids go home with their missions feeling like Planet Protectors and actually are bugging their parents to change. Really, if we want to speak about it truthfully, they're bugging their parents, using the power of kids bugging their parents. Um, But so 90— over 90% of kids do actually try, and depending on the mission, between 50 and 70% of kids succeed in changing their families, and often for long term.

Yeah, love it, love it. Okay, so many questions. So you started this, you're doing this in Canada, you're doing it outside of Canada. What's the scope at the moment?

At the moment, primarily in Canada because of COVID Just before COVID we'd started working in India. And kind of randomly through a connection that we had, who brought it to some schools, and it worked so incredibly, so well. It was so exciting. The kids were like, after 45 minutes, seeing visions of a green India and dedicating themselves to be Planet Protectors. And so we were working on building the India market, and then COVID hit. So then India went into turmoil, and so did we. So our focus went back to just surviving nationally, you know, work nationally for COVID. Um, and then, but during COVID when we were doing— the first thing that we did was when all the schools shut down across Canada, and all of our programs did, we switched quite quickly within about 10 days to doing live Zoom broadcasts with our actors talking live to kids in lockdown.

Yeah.

And that went all over the world to like, I think, 12 different countries from like Qatar to Taiwan to South Africa. And that was a really cool experience to see, wow, it works in all those countries as well.

Yeah. And how did you find them? How did they find you?

I have no idea, honestly. Like, it was—

yeah, word of mouth.

Word of mouth. Some, you know, internet marketing we did. But, you know, at the time, we— at the time, we thought when COVID hit and everything was— everyone was trying to figure out how to go online, we were like, hey, we're the experts, we've been doing this for 10 years. But of course, everybody else was saying they were online too. And so we had to suddenly like, oh, how do we actually differentiate ourselves as being the online people? Previously sort of the attitude was a little bit like, well, why are you doing online when kids should be outside? We're like, well, kids are also in the classroom and this is where we're reaching them. And now it's like, oh, how do we show people that actually— it took us a while to get through the noise of that time, right?

Yeah. And so what's— what is— what have you learned during this crazy time? Like, what is working for you online? How are you making that real?

Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things that we learned, which we'd always suspected, was that our programs don't just have an environmental impact or impact on how teachers teach or how they feel comfortable about teaching environmental topics or getting kids engaged in learning. We all— we knew all those things. What's something that we did learn was that our programs were making kids happy and calm. And so that's something that we measured during COVID and it was really exciting to actually see that like 80% of kids felt calmer because we're teaching them the superhero calming breath and we're talking to them about how they feel about the pandemic and we're telling them even though they're alone that they're part of something, they're part of the Planet Protector Alliance that goes all around the world and everybody is needed, your own superhero power which you may not know what it is yet is needed and no superpower is too small. Other things we've learned are our performers can perform into a complete void, because they're so good. Because, and you know, because of child safety, we couldn't see any of the kids. Yeah, in the, in the home edition, when we're just talking to one kid on Zoom, they would chat to the actors. We knew. But then in this last spring, we realized we weren't reaching a lot of kids in lockdown, but there weren't very many programs helping schools just deal with the pandemic as a school. Like, what were they doing for school spirit? Nothing. Everybody's chopped up into, into little pieces and separated. So We learned there was actually a big market and appetite for programs like ours that could be interactive, engaging, embodied, and online. Since then, we've really learned that our USP really makes us shine in the space, you know, like that we're fun and that we're embodied. Those two things together, but also just that we're giving kids something in the middle of the pandemic and climate chaos, what everybody's feeling, even young kids, you know, how important this idea of we're together, we, you know, we're all needed, and there's hope, we have a vision for the future.

I so love this. I'm, I'm writing a ton of notes as you're talking, partly because I just like interchange Planet Protector with Activator, right? And I just keep going, fun, engaging, interactive, embodied, definitely embodied, and feeling like you're belonging and making a difference. Together working on a collective project. We have a collective project, right?

Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Yeah, you know, I'm doing the young kids, you're doing the activating.

It's everything. And I started with young kids, younger kids, uh, with Kids Energy, a company that I had back in the day. So I'm just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, I started trying to convince adults back in the '90s and nobody would change anything. Recycling? What are you talking about? So when I found out, oh, I actually know how to talk to kids and convince them Right, less layers of the onion to peel for sure.

It's also this kindness and interconnectedness, it's the relationships that we're building as activators in the community and radical generosity. So it's literally like we're parallel sisters in parallel universes. So nice to meet you.

Likewise, likewise.

So okay, I just— okay, we have all this— there's just so much leadership needed, such the permission space for all these incredible young planet protectors to come together. And I love this, like No superpower is too small. No gift is too small to bring. We need everybody. Do you have like a couple favorite stories you can share of what's happened as people get engaged in your programming?

Oh yeah. I mean, one of my very, very favorite stories is somebody I met when she was 26, and we met at a conference where she was speaking. Her name is Tessica Tuong, and she saw a play of ours when she was 6 years old. She sang the song back to me. Oh, and she said, you inspired me, like her whole life. And she started, she started when she was in high school with an anti-bottled water campaign that spread across from her school across Vancouver. She, um, was, uh, started two nonprofits, environmental nonprofits. Last year she ran for office for BC Legislature on a climate platform. She's advising the BC government on climate issues. Like, she's like this amazing superstar. And another story actually is just my daughter's in university, second year university, Simon Fraser, and she's meeting all her classmates and she told them what we do and they apparently all said, "Your parents were my childhood." Amazing. Yeah, but we have lots of stories of impact for kids.

This is long-term work and just helping us all recognize we have power, we can make a difference.

And the reason we reach this group, this age group, is because they're old enough to have agency in the world. So younger kids that we're in— I didn't say what our age group is, like 6 to 11, about. Younger kids don't have very much agency out in the world, and they're just learning basic, basic skills. So they're old enough to have agency and young enough to still believe that they could be superheroes. So that's, that's our group.

So good. So you're now doing this globally, sharing this globally, getting lots of recognition. What's the— what is the plan? Where are you going next?

Well, next we are really focused on scaling because we have this tool, we have programs on water, waste, climate, and emergency preparedness actually. They work in India. They work in Africa. I mean, not all communities, more in the community with kids who need to conserve water, for example, where our message is for kids who are already conserving water because they're carrying it. But we have this tool that can go anywhere. So our focus right now really is on expanding that market. And we are just in the middle of hiring 3 positions, actually, thanks to SheEO and also some federal funding we got. One for international sales into chains of private schools in the Middle East and India, and the other to expand our Canadian market and U.S. market. Um, the other piece that we're doing, which is, it's kind of new and interesting, is that we, um, are developing an employee engagement model of this, and we actually are in the middle of signing a contract with our first major global company very exciting major global company, and they're, they're asking us to help them transform every employee into changemakers. And that is a very, very exciting mandate to come into a global company with. So we're seeing about same, same approach with the kids in, in the company, the, the kids of the employees driving change in the company. So that's kind of an exciting opportunity that we're exploring now as well.

That's amazing. Uh, everyone needs this. Like, we all want to be part of creating change, and so many people just feel so disconnected from it. So, uh, rev model for that— is it a per-person thing, subscription?

Yeah, it'll be per person. Right now we're just developing, designing it in partnership, so we aren't— we're not at that stage yet. We're developing the pricing model, but it definitely will be per person. And right now it's going to be a live event because we always design in context, and then we'll have a an asynchronous digital version eventually that will be per person. Yeah.

Do you have an online community for— well, the young ones are young, right? So they're not—

that's— this is our inherent problem with social media is that all our kids are under 13 and you have to be 13.

Yeah, hard.

So we haven't done a lot, although there's so much opportunity. And then the other piece is internet safety for children.

Yeah, not— that's a hard one. Yeah. So do you plan to do more? I mean, it looks like we're I guess some people are back in schools, but like the live thing is still hard, right? So are you doing more live this year or— or yeah, any more digital?

Yeah, we're still doing, uh, it's our main thing actually is to do live assemblies. Um, uh, the live assemblies have been our big, our big thing. And then teachers can do the digital classroom afterwards if they have the space in their brains and their class, you know, it depends on where teachers are at, right? But our main thing right now is the live assemblies.

Great. And so what are the— what can we help you with? Is there anything— so those who are listening to this and hearing this and want to get their kids engaged, so can they go to your website and suggest to their school to get involved? Like, what are the calls to action?

They absolutely can. Spreading the word about Planet Protectors— our website is planetprotectoracademy.com— is great. Telling teachers about it is great. Our current model is one where we, you know, have funding from a certain municipality and then We've had it before where only the schools in that municipality get the program, and now we're just like, that's silly, just let people use it.

So yes, we just want to drive people to your site. Um, so you're excited about this employee engagement thing, which is fantastic. Uh, any other things coming up in the vision that you're excited about that you can actually share?

Yes. Um, well, we've had interest in doing a television show for some time now, and I've just had a reach out from two production companies last week. Interested in talking about a TV show. So that's very exciting to me. Children's TV shows are generally marketing for toys, so it would be really lovely to have a TV show that's essentially marketing for our Changemaker program. But in itself, we still would want the same idea that a kid watching feels like they're attending, you know, Jedi school, as I call it, or Hogwarts, or— and doing the missions and stuff.

So absolutely. Oh, I love it. Well, I'm so grateful for your leadership and for the longevity. You're following your intuition and for following your intuition to find the right people to play with and to engage. And so thank you very much for all you're doing. We're thrilled to be supporting you and really, really excited about the traction you're getting.

Thank you so much, Vicki. It's really incredible to be part of this network. I am— my first in-person event was a SHEEO event, and it was my first in-person SHEEO event, and it was just such a beautiful combination of those two things. It was a beautiful event, wonderful people, incredible conversation, and I'm so excited to be part of the network.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Vicki.

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