Category Archives: Advocacy

The sound that changes everything [video]

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The sound that changes everything | World Vision Blog
“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” The words from this 80s pop song by Whitney Houston have been looping through my mind for the past five days. I’ve spent the past week looking through the viewfinder of my camera and seeing the faces of teenagers staring back at me — their eyes shining with hope and their mouths speaking words that will ignite change in their communities. World Vision’s Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) concluded their fifth annual summit last Friday in Washington, D.C. As the summit’s videographer, I witnessed teens from all over the country speak of their diverse struggles, unique cultural challenges, and the problems they face in bringing...
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What makes an advocate?

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What makes an "advocate"? | World Vision Blog
What does it mean to be an advocate? Dictionary.com defines advocate as “a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc.” For me, that definition feels impersonal. The 120 young people in Washington, D.C., this week for World Vision’s Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) summit bring personalization and breathe life into advocacy. Friday was Capitol Hill day for the fifth annual YEP Summit. Teenagers came from urban centers or rural hamlets across the United States. Many live in poverty or in areas plagued by violence and drug or alcohol abuse. Despite their troubles, they refuse to give up. They refuse to be beaten down. They stand up for their communities. They advocate....
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Your role in changing our world

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Your role in changing our world | World Vision Blog
Imagine for a moment that you woke up tomorrow and discovered you were on a different planet in a different part of the universe without any idea of how you got there. Imagine what you would feel and the questions that would rush into your mind. Well, I have news for you – that exact thing has happened to every one of us. Sometime in the past 100 years, we were all born on the third planet from the sun in a solar system within the Milky Way galaxy, in a universe that is incomprehensibly vast. We had no idea how we got here, all we know is that we were born into the middle of a story that started...
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Hard facts about labor trafficking

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Workers cleaning old shoes so that they can resell them in the markets in Thailand and Cambodia. ©2007 Haidy Ear-Dupuy/World Vision
When I was 15 years old, I got my first job as a lifeguard. Before I started, I had to obtain a work permit with my parents’ consent and the consultation of my school. There were strict rules governing the hours between which I was allowed to work, as well as how many hours I was allowed to work per week while school was in session. All of these regulations were in place because I was a minor. I resented them at the time. As an adolescent who longed to be treated as an adult — and who wanted to earn my own money — I thought the state had no business telling me when, where, or for how long...
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Birth registration: The first step in child protection

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Siblings in Bolivia proudly show the IDs that were given to them in a joint effort between the government and World Vision to provide proper identification to children and adolescents. ©2010 David Dickler/World Vision
Editor’s note: Birth registration — documentation that ensures the government knows you exist — is a growing issue worldwide, especially in fragile states where governments are either unable or unwilling to implement effective birth registration policies. For more on the importance of birth registration, read “Why registration matters: Children are cared for and protected.” When you think about congressional testimony, you think about big rooms, hot lights, and lawmakers peering over their spectacles to ask the hard-hitting questions about the most pressing issues of the day. When discussing the importance of child protection, you might expect an array of complex and lofty rhetoric that hints at the largeness of the issue, but fails to tackle the concrete steps that a...
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