“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
— Alan Turing
M Hope Blooms Hope Blooms/Arlene Dickinson Nimbus Publishing
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atlanticbookstoday.ca
amadou Wade is fond of this particular line attributed to ground-breaking thinker and computer scientist Alan Turing. As a long-time member of Hope Blooms, a youth-led community project growing vegetables and herbs and producing their own line of popular salad dressings, Wade is getting accustomed to “achieving things people don’t really imagine you achieving.” “I feel like that resonates with us,” says Wade, “because from the outside looking in you see the stigmas, you see the stereotypes of inner-city kids. But we’re really achieving great things.” Back in 2013, Wade was on a team of young kids from Hope Blooms who presented on CBC’s reality investor series, Dragon’s Den. After going in asking for a $10,000 investment to help meet the growing demand for their home-grown herb salad dressings, the Hope Blooms kids brought tears to the eyes of several Dragons and went home with four contributions of $10,000 each. The story that moved the Dragons to tears (and to ponying up financial support) is told in Hope Blooms: Plant a Seed, Harvest a Dream. It is one of three new books—the others are about an autistic weather aficionado and an 11-year-old citizen scientist—that, on the surface, tell vastly different stories. But they all hone in on some basic principles that drive their subjects—all of them under 40—who “no one can imagine anything of.” They have all achieved book-worthy success and they are all, each in their own ways, changing and inspiring the world in the process.