I Should Use My Voice to Benefit Those Who Don’t Have One
By Haben, Coordinator, International Youth Leadership Council, Advocates for Youth
I always knew that I wanted to study and live in Washington DC. The city where all of the big decisions were made, and everything happened. The whole world would be at my fingertips…..right?
I don’t think I really knew the true meaning of inequality until I came to live in DC. While I attend a school in one of the wealthiest communities in the country, there are people ten minutes away living below the poverty line. I’m sick of seeing a minority few controlling the lives of everyone else in this world.
The AIDS epidemic is sweeping over the entire continent of Africa, and if we don’t do something about it, it will continue to worsen in other parts of the world. The politics around this disease has gone too far. The main concern should be the people affected by the disease. What does it say about our society when we’ve let political agendas get in the way of people’s lives? As a young Eritrean American female, I am extremely fortunate to not have been directly impacted by this disease, as it does target almost every demographic group that I fit in. I should use my voice to benefit those who don’t have one. Working through the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth has given me the opportunity to do that on an international scale. There are too many people in this world who are forced to suffer through this epidemic in silence. I’ll never be able to speak for all of them, but I can always try.
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