Ann Curry, Grace VanderWaal, Jessie Reyez, JoJo Siwa and more Join WE Day Minnesota to Celebrate Youth Taking Action on Local and Global Social Issues

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Nov 08, 2017, 07:00 ET

ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, WE Day, an international series of stadium-sized, life-changing events, brings together world-renowned speakers and performers including Ann Curry, Lizzy Greene, Adrianne Haslet, Kenyan Boys Choir, Jessie Reyez, Dr. Jacqueline Sanderlin, Alyson Stoner, Margaret Trudeau, Grace VanderWaal, Spencer West and more. With co-hosts JoJo Siwa and Khiry Johnson, and alongside international activists and WE co-founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, the cast of returning WE Day favorites and new faces joins 18,000 students and educators at the Xcel Energy Center to celebrate the contributions of young people to our world and kick-start another year of change.

- Bios, photos and information for WE Day Minnesota available on the Electronic Press Kit -
- Follow #WEday on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram -
- WE Day Minnesota streams live at 9:30 a.m. CT on November 8 on WE.org/watchweday -
- WE Day Minnesota is free to thousands of students thanks to partners led by
National Title Sponsor The Allstate Foundation -

Together with partners led by National Title Sponsor The Allstate Foundation, WE Day Minnesota will host over 550 schools from across the state and thousands more youth across the country watching live online at WE.org/watchweday. With celebrity speakers, renowned performers, and global thought leaders, WE Day Minnesota celebrates the remarkable stories of people creating change.

"I'm beyond excited to co-host WE Day here in Minnesota with 18,000 of my peers," said Nickelodeon talent, New York Times bestselling author, YouTube sensation, singer, dancer, actress and ambassador of anti-bullying, JoJo Siwa. "WE Day encourages young people to not only embrace their differences, but to celebrate them. This generation refuses to accept bullying and makes the choice to share kindness and positivity instead. The students at a WE Day are a community – they believe in themselves and others, and together they're making this world a brighter place."

Speakers and performers at WE Day Minnesota will energize the crowd through a day full of powerful speeches, inspirational moments and empowering performances. A few must-see highlights include:

Television personality and news journalist, Ann Curry, takes the audience through her life's journey towards developing empathy for her fellow human, inspiring her to use journalism as an outlet to give a voice to those who are silenced.
Singer, songwriter and 2016 winner of America's Got Talent, Grace VanderWaal, performs hit songs "Moonlight" and "Much More Than This".
Former First Lady of Canada, Mother of the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, author and mental health advocate, Margaret Trudeau, shares her personal experience with mental illness and educates students about the importance of caring for their mental wellbeing.
Artist, Jesse Reyez performs her hit song "Figures" and closes the show with "Great Ones".

More than a one-day event, WE Day is connected to the free, yearlong educational program WE Schools. Providing schools and community groups with curriculum, educational resources and action campaigns, the program is designed to enhance a school's existing social initiatives or spark new ones. WE Schools encourages students to further their curricular learning and develop life skills for success beyond the classroom. In the 2016/2017 school year, schools and groups across Minnesota helped strengthen their communities through WE Schools, volunteering more than 635,000 hours and raising nearly $1.7 million in support of more than 545 local and global causes including hunger, poverty, the environment and bullying.

"We're honored to celebrate with young change-makers from Generation WE, who have earned their way to WE Day by taking action on local and global issues," said Craig Kielburger, co-founder of WE. "Today, WE Day Minnesota will unite hard-working students and educators as they experience a day of inspiration, while celebrating their incredible achievements in service."

WE Day is supported in Minnesota by Co-Chairs Dean Phillips & Hutton Phillips of The Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation. Nationally, WE Day is supported by Co-Chairs Tom Wilson, Chairman and CEO, Allstate; Jane Francisco, Editorial Director of Hearst Lifestyle Group and Editor in Chief of Good Housekeeping; Brett Tollman, CEO, The Travel Corporation; and Mike Dobbins, Head, Strategy and Corporate Development, RBC.

WE Day—the world's largest youth empowerment event—is free of charge to students and educators across the United States, thanks to the generous support of partners led by National Co-Title Sponsor The Allstate Foundation. The Allstate Foundation believes Good Starts Young^®, and is committed to empowering America's youth with the strength, confidence and leadership skills to step up as leaders and achieve success in their lives. Students can't buy a ticket to WE Day—youth from across the country earn their way by the actions they take on one local and one global cause of their choice.

About WE
WE Day is part of WE – a family of organizations making doing good, doable. WE is made up of WE Charity, empowering domestic and international change, ME to WE, a social enterprise that creates socially conscious products and experiences to help support the charity, and WE Day, filling stadiums around the world with the greatest celebration of social good. WE enables youth and families to better the world – supporting 7,200+ local and global causes by volunteering millions of hours of service, shopping daily with an impact, and raising millions of dollars that directly benefit their local communities and the world. Globally, WE's teams in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have provided more than 1 million people with clean water, built 1,000 schools and schoolrooms overseas, and empowered more than 200,000 children with access to education. WE was founded more than 20 years ago by social entrepreneurs, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger. Join the movement today at WE.org.