The Present

"People think kids are the future, but really they are the present."--Mayerly Sanchez.

2005 trip to Athi River, Kenya

I'm often reminded daily of my experiences around the world working with children.  Whether it be little baby Susu I carried for hours because she didn't want to be let down in Santa Cruz, Jamaica or the three Kenyans I onced walked an hour home with  after preschool, there are so many memories of little ones I've encountered so far in my lifetime.

For me children are everything.  They are the essence of joy but yet can be the root of fear (as you realize your child is not anywhere where he is supposed to be and the very core of you begins to panic).  Their laughter can melt some of the toughtest of hearts and their tears can break some of the hardest.  Their innoncence is everything we aspire to be, yet it is the very vulnerability of a child that is being broken and shattered.

We say over and over again that the children are our future... so we continue on with our self gratifying lives ignoring the reality that is around us:  a world slowly melting away, wars ontop of wars, Nations deteriorating because of HIV/AIDS, famines, and injustice.  Children aren't the future, they are NOW!  They are voices to be heard.  They are suffering the result of our actions!

We can change the course of our future, by changing our course in children NOW.

In a time when I'm figuring out the how and when, I see a little child before me.  My child.

I see her tantrums, her laughter, her fits, and her cuddles.  I see her ability to embrace a stranger as well as the fear of being abandoned by mom and dad.  

And what I see in her is the same that resonates in the hearts of so many!

I may not have always been the rescuer, and I've had my fair share of mistakes when it comes to children, and I may not be a great on in the history of World Changers...

     "Few will have the greatness to bend history: but each of us can work to  change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation...It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped.  Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."   -- Robert Kennedy, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 1966

Yet in my experiences, children hearts are so easily molded and shaped and the most sincerest act of love toward a child can make all the difference!  So as parents we invest in the lives of our children now .  And as hearts who desire to see a different world, we listen to the voices of children now.