80% of the world lives in poverty, with individuals earning 10 dollars or less per day. There were an estimated 100 million homeless in 2005 alone, world-wide. 19.5 million people were reported as refugees in 2014.

795 million people are starving and 783 million have no access to water.

The numbers continue to escalate.

Will these figures ever reach a point where they will be impossible to ignore?

What if all it took to make a “real” difference was as simple act of kindness?

It is.  Even the smallest gesture can help move us in the right direction: A world where civil liberty is respected, tolerance is practiced, and peace exists.

Building walls and dividing ourselves from the rest of humanity, remaining ignorant to the suffering of fellow human beings, is unacceptable.

The reason why we are failing to make the world a better place and failing in solving its many problems, is that not everyone feels that this world needs to be changed or they have lost hope that it can be saved. Examples of people who no longer have hope for change are those who are homeless, who have been unjustly wronged by society, and people suffering from poverty. There is nothing more powerful in the history of man than hope. It is because hope never truly dies, and “when there is a will there is a way.” The one way to inspire change is the possibility of another, better world because once someone has seen the good that this world can become they’d want to fight for it.

Once at a camp where I worked at as a counselor in training, there was this little boy who no one listened to. He said he didn’t want to live anymore – he lost his family, the only people that cared about him in his mind. People passed him by, making clear it didn’t matter that their was a boy on some old wooden steps crying his eyes out. I remember looking in his eyes and knowing that if someone didn’t do anything or say anything, that little boy wouldn’t be there tomorrow – that this might be the last time anyone would ever see him.

My friend and I told the counselor and director of the camp after trying to console him. The boy ended up diagnosed with depression and able to get the help for it. This memory still terrifies me. What if I didn’t listen to him like everyone else? What if I didn’t realize or believe that he was serious? Would he have still been here today? What frightens me the most though, still, is that everyone was able to turn a blind eye to a kid in that much pain.

There are so many ways people can help out the world today. There are community services and camps that can help educate children and people of poverty and inspire them. There are community services that help the homeless peoples where you can build homes or work in a shelter. There are charities and organization that directly target the sick and disabled portions of people in need today. Honestly, the specifics of what you do don’t matter, people may not remember your name, but they will never forget what you’ve done.

Campo leadership provides many opportunities to give back and make a difference however small, like in the blood drive where you can donate your blood and help save someone’s life, the princess project in which you can donate old prom or ball dresses so someone else who may not be able to afford a dress can feel beautiful, and the canned food drive to help fight back hunger and poverty in communities that need it.

Not everyone in need of faith or hope is halfway across the world. They are within our own borders, our own communities, and our own walls. There are people suffering with stories that we can never imagine like those who suffer from PTSD, poverty, homelessness, and racial discrimination. If we restore whatever lost hopes they have, give people chances, or just hear them out we can change their outlook on the world and begin to make a difference, however small, within it. 

Time, despite the counting seconds on a clock, isn’t measured in minutes or hours, but is in what you do within those seconds. You don’t have to have all the time in the world to do something, no one does, but you can make a difference in mere seconds. Within the seconds that are our lives what matters most isn’t where we go, who we become, but what we do. Its what we leave behind that matters most, the legacy of mankind, so let it be a legacy of the most powerful thing within our history, the hope in which become our dreams.

Use your voice or actions to make change like those #Ibelievewomen protestors who’ve rallied at the Toronto courthouse who were against victim blaming of a woman sexually assaulted. Use your money to give back in movements such as Walmart’s in their donation to fight hunger with a tag of #fighthunger. A simple act of putting a green light up on a porch or a visible place can help vet empowerment by showing support in the green lighting a vet movement with the tag #greenlightavet, makes a difference.