The 40 Hour Famine is now over which means, sadly, it’s time for me to say goodbye to you all in one last blog. I thought it would be a good idea to recap on some of the things I have mentioned over the last couple of months.
In my first blog, I challenged you all to commit to doing one thing every week to help in the fight against poverty. How many of you have been keeping up with this? As youth ambassador, I know for a fact that there are so many of you out there who have! I met young, passionate leaders across Queensland who have done awesome things this year! There have been music concerts, cupcake stalls, school sleepovers, superhero costume competitions and even an entire class who went without furniture for a day! But of course the most popular way people stood up against poverty was by doing the 40 Hour famine. Did you know that over 40,000 online famine profile pages were created?!
This is an indication of how many young and motivated people there are across Australia! And who wouldn’t be determined to stand up and fight poverty? In some of my blogs, I spoke about how 49% of children under the age of five in Timor are severely malnourished; that one child dies every five seconds because they are not immunised; that eight year old boys like Adriano are laughed at if they say that they hope to have a career and be a policeman or hairdresser or teacher one day; that one billion people cannot read or even sign their names; that one person dies every 20 seconds from water-related diseases; that every night one billion people go to bed hungry.
Whilst statistics like these are pretty big things to tackle, you can all be so proud of the amazing things that you have done for this year’s 40 Hour famine! Whether you raised $1 or $100, each and every single person has helped to improve the lives of the people of Timor and other developing countries across the world. I like to think of solving poverty as a bit like trying to solve a really hard jigsaw puzzle. At first, a 1000 piece jigsaw seems really overwhelming and it’s often hard to know where to start. What’s important, however, is that you pick up that first piece and attempt something. You may not know how or where it fits in the bigger picture, but doing something, no matter how small, is better than doing nothing. To make it easier, you might then ask your friends or family to help you. This will help you solve the puzzle quicker. Of course, there may come a time where pieces are missing, but it is important that you stick to your goal because eventually, you will see the bigger picture. This is just like fighting poverty. No matter how big or small a role you play in fighting against poverty, it all adds up to the bigger picture – to the ultimate goal of finding the last piece of jigsaw that will complete the picture. For me, this picture will show a world that is free from poverty; a world where no one goes to bed hungry or dies from things like dirty water, lack of food and poor healthcare.
Solving this puzzle may take a while, but the more people who get on board, the quicker it can be realised. The 40 Hour Famine is one way that you have all made a difference, but until next year’s famine, I challenge you to find other ways that you can make a difference! For instance, I am going to try to shop more ethically and encourage others to do the same! What are you guys going to do?
Good luck guys, and remember – one jigsaw piece at a time!
-Ashlee
That was the final blog post from Ashlee, so let’s take a look back to January of this year, when the Youth Ambassador study tour in East Timor was ending, and Ashlee was just about to come home and begin spreading the message about poverty and the 40 Hour Famine to the young people of Australia. Here's the last of Ashlee's video blogs from East Timor:
If you're interested in being one of World Vision's Youth Ambassadors in 2012, you can find out more here.