What's Next?

During the process of writing a passion blog post every week, i've learned a lot.I've gained a lot from the various research that i've done and it's opened my mind to a part of the world that is dire need of attention.It was startling to see "how the othe rhalf lives", and how for years and years, these children and the people in the Middle East and Africa have struggled one conflcit after another.

I've done research on education and poverty.Illness and sexual assaults.And every week that i presented such hard research and devastating stories,through my research I was aways meant with pictures of smiling children who somehow pushed through the pain in their lives and found time for laughter.It really made me realzie, as corny as it may sound, that we really have no reason to complain about long study hours or lack of sleep in college because in many countries children are fighting for their lives, dunkering under structures to escape bombs, or watching their parents die before their eyes.We will never truly know what real struggle is.

I think that's why i chose this topic for my passion blog this semester. People's rights are my passion, children's rights are my passion. I thought in the beginning of this semester that it would just be a good topic that would be different from what every other student was doing, but i was wrong. It truly did open my eyes and have me reconsider what I might want to do in the future.Hopefully i will volunteer in some capacity to improve the lives of children overseas, who knows? All i do know, is that when a passion takes hold of you, and when you truly feel that you need to make a difference, you have to step up and take action.Bystanders will never truly feel they have a purpose until they find a passion.

I do not foresee this particular blog continuing into next semester because of the fact that it seems like all has been said.I chose to end the blog with a positive story, and on a positive light, of a girl who made a difference for herself and other young girls, despite the many obstacles that she faced.I wanted to end on that note because I felt that it was important to highlight the good.It's like when someone is depressed, the worse thing they need is more darkness and sadness coming into their lives.And it would be counterproductive to what i envisioned for this blog, to have the last post be of something heartbreaking.Even in times of bad, there's always someone's whose willing to do something good.And many times we find this in the lives of children and young people, because they seem to have a more forgiving heart. By highlighting this teenage girl as i did in my last post, I hoped to bring some positivity into the blog and have the readers realize that in these war-torn countries, not everyone is letting the suffering get to them.I hope from my blog that I made someone more aware of what is going on overseas that we really do not hear about that often.And I hope that it influenced someone to go out and make a difference.