Make a Change | Teen Ink

Make a Change

March 2, 2017
By AddyE.Z. BRONZE, Myerstown, Pennsylvania
AddyE.Z. BRONZE, Myerstown, Pennsylvania
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
"...you'll do less damage."
"I'll damage you if you don't shut up!"
-Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger (Star Wars Rebels)


I live in a tiny town in Pennsylvania. This land used to be forests, miles and miles of forests, with beautiful animals and peaceful Native Americans. Now, it's endless miles of fields, to feed us. Little does anyone around here know, that in Africa, there's kids on the brink of death, because they don't have a single bite of food.
      

If you turn on the TV, you see an endless amount of commercials for cars. We worry about what kind of technology our new car will have but kids in poor countries don't have shoes on their feet to get them safely to school.
      

Here, people try to get special prescription medication when kids in other countries are dying because of illnesses easily prevented by our medicines.
      

We tear this Earth apart trying to get gas and oil and we're causing earthquakes because of it. We're destroying animal species with this and global warming.
      

If we move to a new house, we wonder how big our room will be. But in this world, there's kids sharing a one-room hut with a dirt floor with their entire families. There's kids who live on the streets because they don't have a home. There's kids in Syria who are wandering around war torn streets, praying that they can find their families, even though they know it's hopeless.
      

Kids here complain about going to school while there's kids who will grow up doing the worst jobs because they could never get an education. Those kids could be the next Einstein, but we'll never know now.
      

There are kids in foster care because there's no parents to care for them. I have a three year old cousin, and it would break my heart if she had to be taken away from her family because of abuse or war or some other catastrophic event.
      

I think we're too busy looking at our own lives, trying to make them great. Our lives are only truly great when we use them to help others. Help someone! Even if it's giving some of your lunch to the poorest kid on your school, or inviting the lonely girl to a sleepover. Show that sad boy your new video game, take time with your family. Change something. Hope for the courage to change what you don't like, hope for wisdom to know what to do for others. Take that first step. Get out of your comfort zone. This world will never heal. But make it a bit better. I'm going to make it better for my cousin. You make it better for your younger siblings, make it better for the baby you coo over in the grocery store, make it better for the little boy who's in foster care. Make it better for your future children. Our ancestors didn't care about us. We can't change that, but we can change the way our future generations will think if us.


The author's comments:

One day, I came home from school in tears because I fully realized what happened to this world. I wrote this article to encourage people to take a stand and make a change.


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.