Meet the seven-year-old community superhero showing adults how it’s done

Maurice, can you tell me what made you want to create Tidy Town?

Maurice: I saw my dad do events (Christian was an architect but has moved into events), and I was so interested. I wanted to do my own event, and then me and my dad were playing a game called the rubbish game, and we thought it would be a good idea to change the name, because we thought rubbish game was not that kind, and it was a competition. We thought it would be better if we do teamwork instead of competition. So, then we came up with Tidy Town.

What’s the rubbish game?

Maurice: It’s who gets the most rubbish, and we weigh it at the end and whoever wins will get some surprise.

But Tidy Town works on teamwork instead? Will you still weigh the rubbish collected?

Christian: No, I think there will be too much rubbish, hopefully. I think we will have about 40 bags, maybe even more, because there will be 100 kids, 110 kids, and parents. We have 30 plastic bins and 50 bags, so let’s see how dirty the West End is.

Maurice, does it feel strange that it takes you, a seven-year-old, to decide to clean up your suburb?

Maurice: No, it does not feel strange. It makes me feel proud of my suburb, and I feel very brave when I do this.

How did you find the people who are going to take part? How did they find out about Tidy Town?

Maurice: We had three posters, and jiu-jitsu.

Christian: We are part of the jiu-jitsu community, and then we are part of a Chinese school community, and also obviously the West End State community. The school supported Maurice and they put it on Facebook. All the kids will get free T-shirts, and they will get amazing raffle prizes.

Maurice (excited): Like Story Bridge Adventure climbing tickets and rugby tickets and Urban Climb tickets. Oh wow, it’s crazy, yeah, and it was crazy that we got 110 ice-cream scoop vouchers from Messina.

How did you find the sponsors?

Christian: Maurice and myself, we have the Wednesday after school, so we had two hours and then we just we played kind of a game, how many companies we can catch in those two hours, so we gamified the approach and then we went to all the sponsors and I asked Maurice to pitch his idea, so he was always pitching to all the companies to make him more confident and give him some proof that he can do stuff.

How did you go with that, Maurice? Are you confident talking to adults like that?

Maurice: I’m really confident now, because I went to many sponsors, so I’m really very confident.

Did many say, ‘No, get out of here, kid’?

Maurice: I got some no’s, but I didn’t get some ‘Get out of here, kid’.

That’s good. That would have been terrible.

Christian: But the no’s are part of the game, right?

Maurice: Yeah, the no’s are part of the game.

What’s the most important thing about Tidy Town for you, Maurice? Is it cleaning up the rubbish?

Maurice: The most important thing about my event is kindness. That’s what I really like. Kindness to the environment, to the people, to everyone.

You sound like you have a busy life for a kid your age, Maurice.

Maurice: I do a lot of jiu-jitsu – I won a gold medal last week – and I play soccer but not with a club. I also sell oranges and go to school and Chinese school.

Christian, what are you proud of in what Maurice is achieving?

Christian: He's a great role model for his little sister, Vivian. She can see that he’s very successful in his jiu-jitsu, and then she's following. Anything that Maurice is doing, if he’s selling orange juice, she can see that he’s doing it and she’s just following and copying so it’s quite nice.

Do you have any plans after Tidy Town?

Christian: We’re planning to start a not-for-profit organisation called Generation Kind, and this will be the first event. But then there will be more events run by Generation Kind, a youth initiative focusing on acts of kindness, kids’ empowerment and community action.

So, Maurice, it sounds like you’ll be prime minister of Australia in a few years?

Maurice: Maybe I’ll do some nice events and then I will be a leader, the Australian prime minister.