In this sick and twisted world

This is not a story about a sick and twisted tree. It's a story about how our world is sick and twisted. We've found ways to excuse our own personal short comings, our debt, our cravings for plastic crap and synthetic foods. We find ourselves less and less like humans and more and more like robots. We elect leaders that destroy other countries over greed for a substance that curdles like blood beneath the surface of our earth. Our world is rich with resources and yet poor at the same time. Our waters are clear and clean, in fact, quite commercial. On the opposite side of our earth the waters are muddy, murky, filled with festering germs and inadequacies.

In 1996, what were you doing? Were you graduating from high school? University? Starting your family? Sending your children off to University? Whatever it may have been, it probably revolved around school in some aspect. That same year a 15 year old young man, named Craig Keilburger, visited a group of children in India that did not attend school. These children worked. They sorted out the plastic parts of needles that were used by hospitals and drug addicts. A little girl sits on a dirty ground, dressed in rags and she is touching these needles with her bare hands. Surely, she has been pricked more than once. Can you imagine this? No way on earth would I EVER let my little girl sit on the bare ground in rags, let alone touch used hypodermic needles!!!! She is sifting through them and pulling them apart for the plastic. Her only defence from the viruses that will attack her is that she will be able to wash her hands. In that same muddy water that turns our stomachs, no doubt. Craig founded Free The Children, a group of children helping children around our world by removing child labour from our geography.

This is where Me To We comes in. Go and investigate. Do your part.

Right now I hear a couple of Bratz dolls, in the room next to me, arguing over who is wearing which shoes and if they can interchange their feet!! Another reason to stop the commercialism of the world. In the real world, do starving children imagine over-primped and over botoxed dolls that can change feet with their friends? I don't think so.

And don't forget: "Be the Change you want to see in the world." I'm going to start my change down the hall, now.

signed, the willow