Message for the Director
Having worked in non-profit organizations for the past twelve years. I often ask volunteers, board members, members and myself the following question: Why are you involved in this work and what keeps you motivated?
Although, I do not have children of my own, I am Auntie Mel to four of my close friends’ children. I spend time with these curious, intuitive little ones and wonder what the world will be like in 20 years.
With global warming and resulting climate change as one of the most urgent issues, scientists predict if warming continues at its current rate by 2050 more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction and the Arctic Ocean could become ice free.
I was struck by Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and how if we all do our part we can reduce our carbon foot prints and lower the warming rates.
Resource wars are currently being fought over oil and soon the next one may be over water.
Our public health infrastructure is drastically under funded and lacks linkages with emergency system as we keep adding billions of dollars to the defense budget to fight another war, another terrorist group, another and another.
With all those thoughts it comes back to me and it comes back to you. We can make a difference. It has to start with us. Along with public policy advocacy, educating our children and youth should be top of our priority list. The decisions we make today affect the generations of tomorrow. We have a responsibility to teach them values and social norms that can in fact lead to changing the world of our actions.
What motivates me about this work? The solutions, the hope, the knowledge that we can change the course of history.
Marian Wright Edelman founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund and the first African American women admitted to the Mississippi state bar said, “It’s time for greatness¬ for greed. It’s time for idealism¬ ideology. It is time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.”
It is time and I welcome this opportunity.
