Yesterday The General Romeo Dallaire Genocide Institute went to the Armenian Community Centre in Willowdale.
We hosted 465 students from all over the GTA for a day about Darfur. Side Note: We had 385 students registered but one school decided to come without telling me, and bring 70 STUDENTS.
We screened the "Last Just Man", had Dr. Norman Epstein do a seminar on Darfur and had a panel on student activism.
They were all good high school students. Very interested in helping out in the cause.
Even though the day was incredibly long, it was successful.
However, there was an overarching thread that I saw that irked me. Some of the students came to me and expressed their frustration. They were already doing stuff in their school, so how come they hadn't seen results yet? How much longer? What else could they do? Why wasn't the government doing anything? Why weren't their troops on the ground yet? I felt incredibly frustrated. I wanted to tell them that six months of activism doesn't stop a freaking GENOCIDE, so maybe they could find it in themselves to keep plugging away at it? Could ya? That'd be great.
Newsflash ladies and gentlemen: activism is difficult, annoying, time consuming, and progress takes a long, long time. That's why there are so few activists. It's hard and doesn't pay well, and change is not guaranteed.
But we know one thing for sure, if we don't do anything Darfuris will still be killed, raped and mutilated. But if we do something? Who knows what we can do?
1 comment:
That is really annoying. Those poor kids, though. It's hard to come to the realisation that all the hard work in the world isn't always enough.
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