In your class, Sonja DuBois challenged you to pick one cause to devote their time, energy, and resources to. As you age, there will be lots of requests and demands of you for social causes and charities. One lesson of the Holocaust is that "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." (Edmund Burke) We are responsible, throughout our lives, as citizens of a democracy, of a society, for doing our best to correct injustices around us. Too often we do one of two things: we either ignore these problems or we try to give a little to everything to ease our guilty consciences. As Sonja so eloquently pointed out, imagine if each person chose ONE cause and devoted him or herself to it for life?
Obviously my passion is respect for your fellow man. I have devoted myself as an educator to a study of the Holocaust in the hope of educating those around me about making the world a safer place. I feel that every human being deserves respect. As far as my "cause", beyond being a Holocaust educator, I am committed to a ministry for abused and neglected children called Royal Family Ministries. My church does a camp every summer for nearly forty children in the foster care systems of Bradley, Hamilton, and McMinn counties. I have served as a counselor at that camp almost every year since its inception in 1999. This is our tenth year for Royal Family Kids Camp, and we have expanded that ministry to include a middle school retreat about five years ago. I serve on the Royal Family board at my church, Kraig and I are both counselors, and we have chosen to make this ministry the source of our financial support. You know that I try not to ask you to do anything I would not/am not doing, so I wanted to answer the question that follows before I asked you to.
My question to you is, what is your cause going to be? What are you passionate about? What do you see as something that merits your time, energy, and resources? Or are YOU going to stand by and do nothing?
Lit Terms 2
5 years ago
4 comments:
Bravo Athena! As you have discovered someone needs to stand up for the innocent. Thank you so much for your long term involvement in RFKC. The children have changed my life as well. One church, one camp, one child at a time we are going to change the face of foster care.
Glenn Garvin,
Director of Mission Fulfillment
Royal Family Kids' Camps
We just finished studying the Holocaust and one of the things that we learned about was prejudice, which is a positive or negative idea about a person or group of people formed without reason. In today's generation teenagers including myself feel like we can't make a difference. The thing we don't all understand is that making a difference isn't all going out into the mission field or fighting for your country or any other sort of world recognized work. As many people know my passion at this point of my life is swimming. Starting last summer I became a mentor for my summer swim team. Through my position on the team I am able to minister to children who otherwise might not have any other opportunities to learn. I can change one life at a time just by the impact that I have on these kids that look up to me, and they teach me just as much about myself as I teach them. When I get older I hope to go into the medical field because I want to change lives and help others. If my plans work out I hope to become a medical missionary to a third world country because I want to be able to look back on my life and be able to say that I made a difference to someone...
-bella plate
I so totally agree with Bella. Us teenagers believe that we can't make a difference. We think, "I'm only one person. How in the world am I going to change lives and make a difference." I know I sure say that. Well i try to get involved in as much as I can to help make a difference in my life or someone else's even if its the littlest thing in the world I'm still probably going to do it because the littlest things can make a difference, so I've been told. I really don't go to church as much as I should, but I am involved in it and every year we have different activities to help other people. For example, we have a Rumage Sale to help raise money for the needy. Then, we have a huge can food drive that we give to other countries and people who need it. Also, we do that Christmas Shoebox gift thing. Those important and useful things we send can help a child who feels like no one cares about them.
Like I said i try to help out even if its something little, its something thats going to change someone's life somewhere. It may be hard to help, but who knows you could probably make someone the happiest person in the world.
^^CrAzY CaSeY^^
A smile goes along away. No I probably can't create world peace, but it isn't difficult to grin at someone in the halls of my school. Who knows the smile could be contagous and spread like fire around the whole school creating a mood of happiness. A grin is a mild form showing one cares and sometimes that's all that's needed to flip one's day right side up.
As far as getting involves goes I aspire to try to obtain a positiion working visually impaired children with the desire of giving them hope. For some days hope is all one has.
~Lydia
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