Sustainability is in the heart.

Amongst all the flurry, hype, and interest of the Kony 2012 I was reminded about something: - I care deeply about sustainable and long term solutions. I think awareness is great, I think learning about a place is fantastic, I also think Kony has done some terrible things and I think that it would good to bring him to justice. However, Kony 2012 is not the battle I have been called to, I hear a different rallying cry from the developing world.

The call I hear, the call that Kony 2012 confirmed, is to the big picture problems of regions such as Central Africa.  The invisible communities I have on my heart suffer disease and death from inadequate sanitation, dirty water, starvation from poor farming and economic ruin from earning $1/day. Communities like Altagracia, and the Espinoza family whose latrine floods its filthy contents into their kitchen every hurricane season.  Worldwide,  EVERY single day almost 30,000 children die from poverty related causes. If you spend two minutes reading this silly blog, during that time somewhere in the world 40 children will have died - from dirty water, HIV, hunger, malaria, river blindness, infections, child birth etc etc...All of which are treatable and all of which are preventable.

OK, well that is terribly sad - what Kony 2012 reminded me was that these are terribly important and complex issues, that require long term strategies to combat.  But it is possible, with a careful, community driven movement heavy on empowerment and long term effort we can build sustainable solutions to dirty water, inadequate sanitation, impoverished agricultural yields, and  low incomes. For me, this is where my heart is - building a sustainable future that will lift communities out of poverty and into empowerment and transformation. Sustainable solutions that will stabilize entire regions, not to mention save lives for generations.  That is why I work on what I do, that is why I spent almost two years carefully planning a clean water initiative in the Dominican Rep (even with two years of effort, we still get blind sided!), why I spend hours on the phone speaking with country directors, forming partnerships and raising thousands of dollars - because in the long term it will be worth it...because we can lower the amount of unnecessary death from poverty.

Thank you Kony 2012 for re-connecting me to this vision.