What Has Changed Over 10 Years...... (Not Forgotten Update) Smarter Every Day 2

0:00 Hey, it's me, Destin.

0:00 Every year on Smarter Every Day here,

0:02 I make a video about an orphanage in Peru that I work with called Not Forgotten.

0:07 I've been making videos about Not Forgotten since 2012.

0:11 All right, man.

0:12 So the organization is called Not Forgotten.

0:15 Hey, it's me, Destin.

0:16 Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.

0:17 I made a video on the project for awesome

0:19 website about an orphanage project I've been working on.

0:21 I've got the guy in charge of the orphanage here.

0:23 His name is Tyler.

0:24 You ready?

0:24 What's up?

0:25 It's sustainable and it's working, and there's 25 kids with a home.

0:28 I got quotes here from the kids.

0:30 These are great.

0:31 What's the next step moving forward?

0:32 What's the thing you need right now?

0:34 There are 35 kids in care of Not Forgotten.

0:37 I would like to give you an update into Not Forgotten.

0:40 This year, we don't have something I can point to and say,

0:42 Hey, look, we built that.

0:43 I just have a video.

0:45 It's a video of a party.

0:46 This is the 10-year anniversary of children

0:49 living in the homes at Not Forgotten.

0:52 When I first saw this video,

0:53 I realized to most people this just looks like a talent show.

0:56 There's kids dancing, you got another guy painting,

0:58 here's some people playing music,

1:00 but it's so much more than that once you understand the stories

1:03 of each young man on the stage and how they got here.

1:07 With this being the 10-year anniversary party,

1:08 it's a great time for us to go back and reflect on where we've been.

1:12 I want to go back and see what led up to this party.

1:15 Back in 2014, that was the first time we had actual buildings on site,

1:20 and those buildings were funded by the Project

1:22 for Awesome and from Patreon supporters and private donations.

1:25 One of the reasons I make these videos

1:28 is to encourage people to consider supporting

1:31 Not Forgotten financially because it makes such

1:33 a big difference in the life of these boys.

1:35 What I'd like to do now is throw you to a video from 2014

1:38 where you can see a much younger Destin with a much better jawline.

1:42 It's amazing how much I've aged over the years.

1:45 I want to go see what it was like before any boys were at this site.

1:48 The reveal.

1:50 Wow.

1:52 Between Private Nations and product Russell,

1:54 both of these homes have been built.

1:55 Check it out.

1:56 This is the first building.

1:57 This is the common room right here, we actually have bedrooms for the boys.

2:02 We built legit soccer goals.

2:05 We're building a gazebo in the middle of the water.

2:07 Check it out.

2:08 A farm.

2:09 Okay, the first step before you actually bring kids into the orphanage

2:12 is to get the right families in place to host them.

2:15 You can tell there's a meal going on here.

2:17 We've got how many couples?

2:18 Six couples.

2:18 Six couples are being interviewed in here.

2:20 In that moment, we didn't know which of these parents were going to be the ones.

2:24 But now I can look back in the footage and I can see them.

2:27 I was like, That's them.

2:29 Check this out.

2:29 There's one major difference this year from last year.

2:32 There's kids all over the place.

2:34 We have an operational orphanage in Peru.

2:36 It's a big deal.

2:37 The next year, the boys came,

2:39 and those first sets of host parents did amazing things with those kids.

2:44 In fact, here's a video of Izzat teaching Jack how to play violin.

2:48 I remember when Jack liked to make zombie faces when he would play violin.

2:51 It was hilarious.

2:53 But now, music has become a huge part of his life.

2:56 Let's go back to the 10-year anniversary party here.

2:58 Jack is playing the violin, but not only is he playing the violin,

3:02 he's stepping over to his professor,

3:04 and he's asking the professor to play in a certain key,

3:07 and he's completely comfortable on stage in front of a lot of people.

3:11 Jack loves music so much that he's applied to the school

3:13 of music so he can be a music teacher.

3:16 In fact, here he is playing a song

3:17 with one of the other young men at Not Forgotten,

3:20 and he taught this boy how to play this song.

3:26 And that boy is Manuel.

3:29 Going Coming back to these old videos,

3:31 I remember the first time I interacted with Manuel.

3:34 They're on the playground.

3:35 He's just a kid having fun.

3:37 But over the years, I've watched him grow up.

3:39 Tyler had to tell me that this was Manuel because I didn't recognize him.

3:43 He's grown up so much.

3:44 I remember him as this little guy that likes to sing and dance,

3:47 and he's always happy.

3:48 But here he is, a grown young man.

3:51 When you go back and look at these videos,

3:52 there's a really cool thing that happened in 2018.

3:56 Jean and Patty, the directors there at Not Forgotten,

3:59 they decided they wanted to take these boys on a trip.

4:02 So we used funding that we acquired from Project

4:04 For Awesome and from private donations and from Patreon.

4:08 And we said, we're going to put all these boys

4:10 on a plane and they're going to go to Lima,

4:12 Peru, and they're going to get to see things they've never even dreamed of.

4:15 They got to play in the water.

4:16 They got to go meet cows.

4:18 And one of the boys didn't realize that milk came from cows.

4:21 He didn't believe it, but he got to see it.

4:23 They also got to meet a marine biologist.

4:26 This trip ended up being a really, really big deal.

4:29 I didn't know it at the time, but one of the boys that went on this trip

4:33 and talked to that marine biologist ended up studying aquaculture.

4:37 I think that's what you call it, basically the study of fish.

4:40 It's Andy.

4:41 Andy has gone to university to study what it's like to raise fish.

4:47 It's an amazing thing.

4:48 And he also likes to paint.

4:49 That young man that was painting on stage, that's Andy.

4:53 He likes to paint.

4:54 Look at this.

4:54 It's incredible.

4:56 This is a thing that happened because a young man went on a trip to Lima,

5:01 Peru, with funding, provided because of these videos we make every year.

5:05 I think it's really cool.

5:06 In 2019, work began on a location in the city that we call Aporcar.

5:10 This is a very appropriate name.

5:12 It means to cultivate or to enrich the land.

5:15 This is a transition home.

5:17 So as the kids move out of the jungle,

5:19 Los Lomas, and go into the city with their host family,

5:22 this is a safe place where they can start to integrate into society in the city.

5:26 They can go to university, they can get a job, they can learn a trade,

5:30 this is an important place as they transition

5:32 from being a young boy to turning into a man.

5:36 So you're starting to see why this celebration is so important.

5:39 You see these cakes on the table here?

5:40 These were not made by Axel, but he could have made them.

5:44 You remember last year's video,

5:45 Axel was talking about his love for food and the fact

5:49 that he wants to learn how to make all kinds of regional dishes.

5:52 Well, he's gotten really good at cooking.

5:55 There's teams that go down to not forgotten all the time,

5:58 and Axel makes them delicious cakes, and he's really good at it.

6:02 I mean, look at that thing.

6:03 It's awesome.

6:04 It's really fun to see how passionate he is about this.

6:07 Let's take a second and think about how awesome this is.

6:09 You have Axel, who's making these cakes, and he's making them for other people.

6:13 You've got Andy, Andy loves to paint,

6:16 but he's also teaching the younger kids how to paint.

6:19 We've got Jack, who's teaching other kids how to play music.

6:22 These boys are learning how to give

6:24 back and how to teach the younger generation.

6:26 They're breaking the cycle themselves, which is amazing.

6:30 Not Forgotten is a faith-based organization.

6:32 We're Christians, and we feel called to help these boys, and we love doing it.

6:36 Over the years, we've had contributions

6:38 come in from other Christians and non-Christians

6:40 alike because they see the good work

6:42 that's happening and they want to contribute.

6:44 I think that's really awesome, and we're grateful.

6:46 We've seen the older boys here at the party,

6:49 but what about this younger generation that just now came into Not Forgotten?

6:52 They look really cute here, dressed up as animals, dancing on stage.

6:56 What are their dreams?

6:57 I don't know what they want to do when they grow up.

6:59 Just I didn't know the stories of those little boys I

7:02 saw playing on the playground so many years ago, and it's exciting.

7:07 And so I would like to ask you to make an investment

7:10 in the future of the next generation of these boys, Not Forgotten.

7:15 There's two ways to do that, and it's pretty simple.

7:17 The first way is you can vote for this video at the Project for Awesome.

7:22 I'll leave a link down in the video description for you to do that.

7:25 The second way to support is on Patreon.

7:27 If you are interested in supporting Not Forgotten on Patreon,

7:30 you can do that at Patreon.com/notforgotten.

7:35 It's an easy way to support these young men.

7:38 You can play a part in their story,

7:40 and it's a really easy thing to do if you're willing to.

7:43 Every year, if you support, they send you a patch.

7:45 I know you're not doing it for the patch,

7:47 but that's a thing they do at a certain level.

7:49 The 2025 patch is already designed, and this is what it looks like.

7:52 We'd love to send you one.

7:54 I think it's a really cool way to remember

7:55 that you're a part of the story of Not Forgotten.

8:03 So just recognize, when you see these young men on stage, showing their skills,

8:07 sharing with us their passions,

8:09 that's 10 years of boys living at Los Lomas at Not Forgotten in Iquitos,

8:14 Peru, their lives are being changed,

8:17 and that represents a continuous chain of people supporting house parents,

8:21 working very, very hard.

8:23 Jean and Patty, Tyler and Allison,

8:26 you contributing via Patreon or Project for Awesome,

8:29 All these things rolled into one makes for a really, really cool party in Peru.

8:35 I want to thank everybody who has been a part

8:37 of that over the years through private donations or whatever you've done.

8:40 I just want to say thank you and express gratitude for that because I

8:44 can see the story and I can see that it's truly made a difference.

8:47 With that, there's two things left to do.

8:49 If you please consider going to the Project for Awesome

8:51 website and voting for Not Forgotten, that really helps.

8:54 But the second, which I think is very important,

8:57 please don't forget Not Forgotten

8:59 by going to patreon.com/notforgotten and support monthly,

9:02 because when you do that, we're securing a bright future for these young boys,

9:06 which I think is a very important thing.

9:08 Anyway, that's it.

9:09 I'm Destin.

9:10 You're getting smarter every day.

9:12 Have a good one.

9:13 Bye..

9:14 [violin music]