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Today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day, sponsored by—yes, Bloggers Unite.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of places where human rights are abused or denied altogether. Some of these are better publicized than others: The crisis in Darfur, the plight of women in some Middle Eastern countries, China’s jailing of dissidents and the journalists who tell their stories. Others have political subcontexts, like movements to expand legal protections for LGBT persons and those to increase the availability of abortion as part of reproductive health care around the world.
But I participate in this day on behalf of the youngest victims of human rights abuses: children, who are enslaved, abused and brutalized in ways too horrible to conceive; children, left to scrounge for scraps in garbage dumps; children, recruited as instruments of war in third-world countries in Africa and Asia; children, orphaned by unwilling or unable parents; children, discarded in too many cultures like trash, left for wild animals, their cries ignored by the rest of the world.
These problems can seem impossible to address, their sheer weight and magnitude overwhelming even the most idealistic and ambitious person. But the old saying is true: You can make a difference, one child at a time.
I have sponsored a child through WorldVision for nearly four years. He lives in South Africa, half a world away. It’s likely that we will never meet. But it is my hope that because our family engaged, because we refused to buy into the lie that we can’t make a difference, that little boy’s life will be changed forever.
It’s true; the help I give my child in South Africa doesn’t help one enslaved by sex abuse in Thailand. But I hope that because I have reached out to that little South African boy, someone else will reach out to a little boy in Thailand, and someone else will reach out for a little girl in Darfur, and someone else will reach out to baby girl in India, and so on until somehow, at last, everyone is holding the hand of a child somewhere in the world.
No one can do it all. But everyone can do something.
Here is a link to WorldVision’s web site, where you can browse through the faces of the children who need your help. Want to gain some perspective on the bad day you’ve had? Read about a typical day for a child in Africa. See for yourself the poverty facing children around the world – and in our own backyards. Then resolve, as Gandhi said, that you will be the change you seek, and reach out your hand for the tiny hand of a little boy or girl whose only hope is to make it through one more day alive.
You can make a difference—one child at a time.
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