How can we make 2014 the Year of the Child? In her latest piece for Huff Post Impact, LitWorld's Executive Director, Pam Allyn, explores three different "buckets" of action: self, community, and world.
"This has been a very tough year for children. Recession, wars and natural disasters have impacted children in staggering numbers. More than 16 million children are living in poverty here in the U.S. and over 400 million children live in extreme poverty around the world. To make that incomprehensible number even more devastating, this translates to half of the world's children. In the U.S. alone the number of homeless children has climbed to 1,168,354. To date 11,420 children have died in the Syrian conflict and over one millionmore are living as refugees.
Children are so vulnerable. They have no voting power, no way to advocate for themselves. They are dependent on the adults around them to provide them with safety, food, water, shelter and education. They are dependent upon the whims of politics, the luck or chance of where they happened to born, and to whom. Their wellbeing has little to do with how hard they work, or their "grit" or persistence. It has everything to do with circumstumstance."