“Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right to life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold.” Those are the wise words of an actor by the name of Brad Pitt. I want to address a topic so well known; however, it is neglected by so many of us. How will we be capable of establishing a cure for the troubles of our world, to band-aid all of its scars, and to clear all of its problems without taking care of our future: the youth? It is merely impossible to promote change when all we have been doing these past few years is talking rather than taking action. The thought of that actually takes me back to my Arabic class in high school. My teacher wrote a proverb on the board “اسمع جعجعة ولا أرى طحنا”. That probably looks weird to you if you’re not familiar with this fascinating language. But, in translation it means, I hear cracking but I do not see grinding. Basically, there are words but no acts. As simple as it sounds, that is the problem. Poverty amongst youth is a suffrage that the world in its entirety is fully aware of, yet no changes are being made.

I had a teacher in high school that will always have a special place in my heart. You know those teachers in movies that impact their students lives greatly? She was one of them. She was that teacher that made sure her students left the class with a "dollar and a dream," so to say. And if you haven't seen a movie like that I recommend "Good Will Hunting" with Robin Williams and "Freedom Writers," you should already know that one but if you don't, let's try to crawl out from under that rock, okay? It's worth it, I promise.

Now, back to that class. So, it was a typical morning of AP Gov and Politics with the same two kids that argue over every damn political fraction to the decimeter, you guys know who you are but thanks for entertaining the class and always giving us something to laugh about. So, my teacher started out the morning by telling us a mind blowing fact and I'm going to break it down to you in my own words. You, reading behind your computer screen and you, reading behind your overly-sized phone, camouflaged with other humans that can't seem to look ahead of them without it being through a 5.5 inch iPhone screen. Congratulations, you're a part of the richest one percent of the world. Got student loans and a car that doesn't start on a regular basis? You're probably still a part of that one percent.

Let this sink in. There are about seven billion people in this world and if you're in that one, then what does that make the rest of the 99 percent of the world? I read a BBC article earlier this year that said Oxfam said the total wealth of the one percent of the world is equal to the rest of the world. Isn't that just ridiculous? And that the 62 richest people in the world have what 50 percent of the poorest people in the world have combined. How did we let this happen? How did the world reach this low point? We're so hungry for money and success, to strive to be the greatest, that we don't even notice the underprivileged that we're running over to reach the top of the social hierarchy.

I wanted to write about this for several reasons, the main one being that I am a 19-year-old student trying to survive the depths of college, meanwhile there are people my age trying to survive poverty, war, and political turmoil. People who have not received the privilege in turning 5 years old, to live the many blessed years I have. Children that sadly undergo a life of abuse by their own parents; the two people in the world that should love them unconditionally. A child has every right to be protected, to receive protection, and to have exceptional care. A child has every right to influence our future and participate in influential discussions for the sole reason that they would be able to paint the picture for our future. Did you know that there are six million children just under the age of five that die every single year from starvation? Or how there are five million kids dispossessed from clean water and sanitation. 120,000 children in Africa are enforced in armed conflicts as child soldiers. It is impossible for me to even think about my little brother, Ibrahim, fighting in a war. Could you?

A Syrian child was lying dead ashore while trying to escape his war torn home, on a boat with a maximum capacity of eight people, while he was on board with 16 other passengers.

Palestinian infants are being dug from under the rubble alive.

40 percent of children in Venezuela are living BELOW the poverty line, while one in every ten kids is restricted from receiving an education

Child labor, yeah that stuff you see in the history books, it's still here. In Kenya, 26 percent of kids from ages 5 to 14 are forced to give up education to do labor work.

Remember when we were all huddled up around the TV just a few weeks ago to watch the Olympics? I for one was. Well, one of the many things the Brazilian government hid from the cameras was the reality of how an abundant amount of children live there. In two of the neighbourhoods in the Copacabana and Maracanã areas that were getting ready to host the Olympics, kids as young as six and eight years old were sleeping on the pavements. Teenage girls would try to seek financial stability through prostitution and teenage boys sold drugs to be able to support themselves and their families. So, the government decided to do a little something they liked to call "cleaning the streets", where the police and army "sweeped" the area, preventing any poor person from entering, so they can portray that white picket fence image to the public. Just as a volunteer for Happy Children International said, “They’re trying to give the image that Brazil is safe, that we are nice, that we are happy, that everything is all right. But it’s just a big lie.”

Take a step back from the life you’re living in right now and look through two windows. The first one is your life. You’re driving your own car or taking the bus to school, your fridge is stocked with all types of food, you have your own credit card, and all you have to do is shrug over some midterm you have to study for. Now, look through the other window and imagine yourself in the position of how most kids actually live. Imagine instead of shrugging over your midterm test you’re shrugging over a 75-dollar vaccine that your parents cannot afford to pay. Your brother has HIV and your sister was sold away. The thoughts keeping you up all night aren’t nearly as close to your day-to-day average drama, or Taylor Swift's sleepless nights trying to find her next male target to get a hit single off of. Instead, you are craving clean water and a real bed to sleep in.

If you've made it this far in my article, congratulations! I wish I could give you a cookie. After barring with me and reading through this you're probably thinking okay so what can I do? Little things. Little things to you, big things to them.

1. Eating at a restaurant and you have left overs? Ask for take out and give it to the first poor person you see.

2. You're at a red light and a kid knocks on your window begging for money. Give them that change that's been piling up all year in the cup holder.

3. If you're worried that the money isn't going anywhere good, like for drugs, take them to the nearest food spot and buy them food! No matter what their reasons are, you'll make their day.

4. Donate blood! You'd be surprised by how many people survive just off of blood banks in the hospitals.

5. If you're at the DMV filling in paper work to get your driver's license, if you want, go ahead and tick off that organ donor box. If you're a "Grey's Anatomy" fan like I am, I think you should know by now how many terminally ill kids are on a waiting list for organs (may we all have long and healthy lives).

7. Make it a habit to have an annual closet clean up. Bag up the clothes that don't fit and donate them to charity. There are several charities that will send them anywhere around the world.

8. If you're buying a new laptop because you're too impatient with how slow your old one has gotten, give it up instead of throwing it away. It's definitely a usable laptop for a student who can't afford one, but needs to get his or her assignments in.

9. Instead of leaving your old furniture out on the sidewalk for the garbage collectors to dump in the trucks, donate it! Everything old to you is new to someone else.

10. Smile! It's the best form of charity.

If you're willing to take that extra mile and do big things. Join Habitat For Humanity and help build a house. Sponsor a child to go to school. Donate on those GoFundMe pages. You can give as much as you want or as little as you want.

There’s a first step for everything and the first step is for us to change our train of thought on what actually matters. It is our job to fix this. They are just kids. They did not choose this life. We all have this problem where when we speak, we are so frightened that nobody will listen, nobody will grant us acceptance. But, if we remain silent, that means we have surrendered to fear and fear has overpowered us. Speak. Just as the famous Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Our lives begin to end the day we come silent about things that matter.”