The World Wide Web (of Feeling Good)

I got a personalized response to my last post that was so inspiring, I felt it necessary to share it with a bigger audience. I have been granted permission to share it with you all. Since it is rather long, I am going to keep my own comments this week to this: It is amazing how connected we all are yet so unique in our own experiences of life. Now on to the response...

"I was inspired by your posting “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” I think it captures the spirit of the FG movement. I am an investor in FG and believe that FG is our best chance for changing the world because it calls on the energy, compassion and brilliance of our youth on all university campuses. The time has come to end hunger and it is definitely within our grasp if we can continue to act from our hearts.

I just came across this letter that was written by Craig Kielburger, who at the age of 12 went over to Manila and Brazil to witness the conditions of child labor. Upon his return he started the organization Free the Children. At age 16, he wrote the following:

Poverty is the biggest killer of children. More than 1.3 billion people- one quarter of the world’s population-live in absolute poverty, struggling to survive on less than one dollar a day. 75% of them are women and children. I dream of a day when people learn how to share, so that children do not have to die.

Every year, the world spends $800 billion on the military, $400 billion on cigarettes, $160 billion on beer, and $40 billion playing golf. It would only cost an extra $7 billion a year to put every child in school by the year 2010, giving them hope for a better life. This is less money than Americans spend on cosmetics in one year; it is less than Europeans spend on ice cream.

People say, “We can’t end world poverty; it just can’t be done.” The 1997 UN Development Report carries a clear message that poverty can be ended, if we make it our goal. The document states that the world has the materials and natural resources, the know-how and the people to make a poverty-free world a reality in less than one generation.

Gandhi once said that if there is to be peace in the world it must begin with children. I have learned my best lessons from other children-like the girls I encountered in India who carried their friend from place to place because she had no legs-and children like Jose.

I met Jose in the streets of San Salvador, Brazil, where he lived with a group of street children between the ages of eight and fourteen. Jose and his friends showed me the old abandoned bus shelter where they slept under cardboard boxes. They had to be careful, he said, because the police might beat or shoot them if they found their secret hideout. I spent the day playing soccer on the streets with Jose and his friends-soccer with an old plastic bottle they found in the garbage. They were too poor to own a real soccer ball.

We had great fun, until one of the children fell on the bottle and broke it into several pieces thus ending the game. It was getting late and time for me to leave. Jose knew I was returning to Canada and wanted to give me a gift to remember him by. But he had nothing – no home, no food, no toys, no possessions. So he took the shirt off his back and handed it to me. Jose didn’t stop to think that he had no other shirt to wear or that he would be cold that night. He gave me the most precious thing he owned: the jersey of his favorite soccer team. Of course, I told Jose that I could never accept his shirt, but he insisted. So I removed the plain white T-shirt I was wearing and gave it to him. Although Jose’s shirt was dirty and had a few holes, it was a colorful soccer shirt and certainly much nicer than mine, Jose grinned from ear to ear when I put it on.

I will never forget Jose, because he taught me more about sharing that day than anyone I have ever known. He may have been a poor street child, but I saw more goodness in him than all of the world leaders I have ever met. If more people had the heart of a street child, like Jose, and were willing to share, there would be no more poverty and a lot less suffering in this world. - For a video of Craig’s visit in Brazil you can visit the Free the Children website.

Thank you to all FeelGood students that are the Craig Kielburger’s of the world. Thank you for using your brilliance and putting your compassion into high gear! Thank you for the dollars you raise. Thank you for investing in yourself to become a change maker and thank you for modeling true compassion. You make me feel good!"

Thanks for your thoughtful thoughts. I welcome all your comments as well (good or bad)!

-The Flawger