So the people from ICareRevolution came in to speak to the entire Student Body at Hatch End High School today. It stirred the same inspiration in me that I get every time a charity comes to speak, and previously I’ve always joined up, signed up to help and passed email addresses on, but it’s never enough. Honestly, what good does £2 a month do for starving children in Africa? Yes it’s a start, but it’s the old problem; “Out of sight, out of mind.” There is no “reality” of what’s happening when all people have done is set up a direct debit and receive pamphlets on where their money’s gone once a month. Where’s the reality in that? There’s no shock to it. Shock makes people sit up and listen to something, shock makes people want to do something about it.

That’s how I felt when my sociology teacher showed the class a video about Human Trafficking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOHpW6xDKlw). I was horrified by it, and it made me want to help. So I organised a fundraiser, spread the message around the Sixth Form, raised money and awareness but how many people did it touch? The people who pledged how traumatised they were by the statistics wander around today without it on their minds, they forget about it because it’s so horrifying that it’s something we need to forget about, we need to sink back into our own reality which is comfortable sofas, iPods, mobile phones and take-out food.

No one thinks about the reality outside our own little bubbles. The world is the reality, we’re all part of it, and we’re all connected in bizarre ways. So what makes it okay to forget about our fellow people that are in extreme cases, being sold into the sex slave industry, homeless without any money, trapped in issues of domestic abuse, even in situations as relatively common as unhappy households? It’s not okay for these things to go on and we know it, yet we brush it under the mat because these issues are so horrible that it’s not something we want to think of on a daily basis.

The problem is, the people dealing with these issues do have to think about it on a daily basis. It’s somewhat easy for us to forget because when things aren’t thrusted into our faces and waved about in front of us, we don’t know they exist. It’s all very well to play tragic videos on Comic Relief and mourn about the famine in third world countries, but for us that’s just one day. For the people in those videos, that’s 31,446,925 seconds; 525,949 minutes; 8,766 hours; 365 days; 52 weeks or twelve months, every year. It doesn’t end for them. They can’t switch off their TV after what feels like an appropriate time of misery and flick the channel over to Simpsons. They don’t have that option. These people are suffering endlessly, and we forget about it because it’s reduced to the dedication of a few events a year. Where’s the justice in that?

We know the world is unjust, but how many people have gone home after the speeches given today and honestly sat there thinking “I want to do something about this”? I wonder how many people actually have the drive to be pro-active about it. I want to do something; I want to make a difference. After all, what does money, high-end jobs, good connections and reputation amount to if we have nothing to show from it? We’ll be forgotten after a while, and we’ll have done nothing more in our lives than maybe create companies, make money, work for people, start families and have memories that will die when we do. It’s not even a question of being remembered, it’s a question of making something of your life. The immortal quote from Troy says it all; “Man is haunted by the vastness of eternity, and so we ask ourselves; will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we’re dead and wonder how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?”

What better way to be remembered than helping people? Just the tiniest glimpse of compassion is enough to put a smile on someone’s face. You ever get that situation where someone smiles at you, and you can’t help but smile back? Can you imagine how BIG that smile would be if you could change someone’s life for the better. Nothing makes you feel more whole than helping someone out, I can’t imagine the kind of self-gratification people who dedicate their lives to helping others must feel. After all, how many people do you know of that hate their jobs but only do it to make ends meet? They’ve made miseries of their lives doing something they hate. Why not do something that leaves you with that warm, satisfied feeling only helping can give you? If you’re strong enough to take on the burdens of others, just for a while and put a smile on their faces, it’s enough to make a difference. I’ve always been told by my parents, “do something you love for nothing, never do something you hate for money”. Unfortunately, money does seem to make the world go round. But it’s only the compassionate in life, the ones who go far in moral terms rather than economic terms, who understand that love is a far more valuable commodity than cash. Well these people need to speak up and help out!

I’ve sent blackberry messages to all my Sixth Form friends telling them I’m organising a meeting to do something to help. I’d love to get a campaign started throughout the school, where we could do small focus groups localised to pupils who are unlucky enough to come from troubled backgrounds, or whose home life isn’t fantastic, or who’ve got involved with the wrong people outside school.

I’d love to bite back at those articles in newspapers about the “Troubled Youth”, the “Unhappy, Unloved and Out-Of-Control.” I’m wondering how many teenagers, how many among this generalised “troubled youth” have written articles and submitted them to newspapers. I’m in the process of interviewing old acquaintances I have that participated in knife crime, muggings, credit card fraud, gang-violence and the like. I want to know how they feel about the little old ladies who fear for their lives when they see a teenager walking down the street. People in general have a voice within their MPs and the Government and Unions, but where’s the voice of the youth? We’re spoken for on behalf of bad press and stereotypical media attention.

After all, we are the generation of the future, if we can show people that there is a glimpse of hope for tomorrow then it’s enough to make people sit up and listen to what we’ve got to say! We have some of the most innovative ideas in our young, ignored heads. We’re shunned by the media and by society because we seem irrelevant and “out of control”. We need a little positivity in the news for once, so if we can do something good that makes people stand up and think “wow”, isn’t it worth a little hard effort? I want a revolution!