Connecticut’s Kid Governor to Make Speaking Appearance at March 8th TEDxEastHartfordLibrary Event

Mayor Marcia A. Leclerc and Library Director Susan Hansen are proud to announce that Elena Tipton, a resident of East Hartford and Connecticut’s First Kid Governor, will be making a short speaking appearance and taking questions at the TEDxEastHartfordLibrary event at Raymond Library on March 8th, at 6:30 p.m.

Tipton, who is a fifth-grade student at O’Connell Elementary School, went head-to-head with several fifth-graders throughout the state and based her winning campaign on three points aimed at spreading kindness throughout the state of Connecticut. Those points included: Making the 13th day of every month "Kindness Day," creating a blog where students and schools can share the "awesome" acts of kindness that they are doing, working with kids and adults to bring Christian Bucks' Buddy Benches to school playgrounds in Connecticut (Elena has set a goal for 10 schools in our state to work toward getting Buddy Benches) and listening to the students of Connecticut to find out great things happening at their schools, so that we can all recognize and celebrate how awesome kids in Connecticut are.

Following the speaking appearance by Tipton, the library will promptly begin the  TEDxEastHartfordLibrary event, which will feature two videos of TED talks, entitled “Why Aren’t We More Compassionate?,” a talk by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and “A Radical Experiment in Empathy,” by sociologist Sam Richards, who is the founder of the World in Conversation project. After the viewing of the TED talks, there will be a discussion and question and answer session, where participants will be able to analyze and review all materials presented in the lectures.

East Hartford, which was the first public library system in the state to receive a TEDx event license, will run a regular monthly series of TEDx events, which will take place on the first Tuesday of the month, from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Each event is free and open to the public and pre-registration to the event is suggested. At the end of the March 8th event and all future events, library staff will be on hand to take talk or topic suggestions for all future TEDxEastHartfordLibrary events. To pre-register for the event, please visit https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/18641 or call the Raymond Library at 860-289-6429.