Well, the 40 Hour Famine is winding up and this is my last blog as Youth Ambassador. Here’s a few final thoughts for all you lovely people.
1: Get your money in
Money makes the world go around and the sooner you get your money and books back to your group leader, the sooner they can get it into the hands of World Vision so the people of East Timor can start to benefit. Get on it!
2: Thank you!
I met some of the people whose lives will be affected and saw where the money is going earlier this year on the Youth Ambassador trip to East Timor. Lili, Abito, Adriano, Nanda, Jaoa, Marcella and many other East Timorese people asked us Youth Ambassadors to share their stories. They believed if Australians saw what poverty has done in their lives, we would act. And you did. So thank you. Your efforts have struck a massive blow to the heart of poverty in the poorest country in Asia and changed lives for the better.
Every $40 you raised in the famine was enough to feed 5 people for a month. It’s being invested into health, sanitation and food security initiatives in Timor. That’s changing the world.
But now the Famine’s over for another year. So what now?
3: Where to from here?
There’s one thing I’ve tried to get across in most of my blogs: Your thoughts and decisions can impact the world if you’re willing to back them up with meaningful actions day by day. As Claire discussed last week: compassion on its own isn’t going to change anything, but compassion with action can change everything. So what can you do now?
You could apply to be your state’s next Youth Ambassador. You go to next year’s Famine focus country with the other Youth Ambassadors, then come back and share what you’ve seen and learned with tens of thousands of young people across your state. You can apply if you’re aged between 15-20 and raised $200 in this year’s famine. Take it from me: it’s a pretty cool gig.
Beyond being a Youth Ambassador, there’s plenty more that you can do. You could…
-Join World Vision’s youth activism movement Vision Generation (Vgen) to inspire, educate and empower other Australians to stand up to poverty
-Start a Vgen group at your school.
-Volunteer for World Vision
-Talk to your family about sponsoring a child
-Support another organisation that you respect
-You could do more research into how poverty works
-Who knows, maybe you even want to pursue a career fighting poverty. It’s up to you!
Poverty is a huge issue, but it’s not the only problem in this world. Maybe you’re passionate about other things too. It could be the environment, climate change, refugees, animal rights or any number of other issues. So pursue that passion. The point is, opinions won’t change anything. Actions will. So look at what you’re passionate about, find something to do and do it as well as you can.
Two years ago I was a normal uni student who wasn’t doing much about my passion for people and fighting poverty. I figured I could either keep going along with the way society works and keep on passively contributing to the world’s problems, or I could actively do something to change the way the world works. So I decided to do something. Anything. I didn’t know what exactly. I wasn’t that skilled and didn’t have a degree, I just had passion and wanted to help. So I started volunteering in the Adelaide World Vision office. One thing led to another and now, two years later, I’ve talked to tens of thousands of people about poverty, lobbied politicians, travelled to East Timor and done more than I thought possible 2 years ago. But it all started because I decided to do something and acted on that decision.
It’s seriously been a pleasure talking to you guys these last few months. I hope that you had fun and learned something as you were changing the world with this year’s 40 Hour famine. Now that it’s over, the ball’s in your court. What will you do? Whatever it is, I wish you all the best.
-Will
That was the final blog post from Will, so let’s take a look back to January of this year, when the Youth Ambassador study tour in East Timor was ending, and Will 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 Will’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.