Give in to Hope Day 33: Sophie Cruz
Spending time with family seems like a pretty normal experience for most of us, but when a child has parents who are living in a country as undocumented immigrants (which means they don’t have the papers that they need to be in that country legally) it can be extremely scary, as you never know if your parents will get taken away, deported back to the country they came from. For 5-year-old Sophie Cruz, she worried about this all the time. She was born in the United States, but her parents were from Oaxaca, and she did not want to be separated from them. When her family had the opportunity to see the Pope (the leader of the Catholic church), she broke past security to attempt to give the Pope a letter she had written, pleading with him to save her parents from deportation. The Pope saw Sophie, stopped his motorcade, and accepted her letter. The next day, at his meeting with members of the US Congress, he urged more compassion and acceptance for immigrants and refugees. Since this historic meeting, Sophie has also met President Obama, spoken at the Women’s March, spoken out against the Trump Administration, and continued to work on behalf of undocumented immigrants and helping them stay legally in the US. This tiny activist is someone who people want to pay attention to, and her passion to keep her family, and thousands like them, together, keep her focused on change.
To learn more about Sophie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPa464CEbuE
To see Sophie’s meeting with the Pope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7RIkeCgcz0
What would it feel like if you were worried the parent/guardian that you live with would be sent away? How would this affect you at home, at school, with your friends? If you had to write a letter to someone important, telling them why families should be able to stay together, what reasons would you give?
Closing Prayer: Dear God, Every voice, no matter how small, can make a big difference. Help us use ours. Amen.
We have already touched on access to clean water being a human right, as well as the young activists who are working to center Indigenous communities in environmental justice work. Autumn Peltier, a member of the Anishnabek Nation in Ontario, Canada, is a young climate activist who is not afraid to go toe to toe with powerful people in her fight to protect the water. She criticized Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to his face for his support of oil pipelines that run through First Nations lands, and challenged him to have more Indigenous voices included in conversations about Canada’s environment. She is considered the Chief Water Protector of her people, a title she was passed down from her aunt, another climate activist and Water Protector. As comfortable talking with world leaders as she is to her followers on Instagram, Autumn is charismatic and committed to reclaiming our sacred connection to water, the source of all life.
Today’s hero is very brave, and her life has been very hard. In the country where Sonita Alizadeh grew up, it is very common for girls to be sold away from their families as brides, even when they are very young. This practice is unfortunately common in many places in the world, where daughters do not have the same value placed on them as sons. Sonita’s family attempted to sell her at age 10, and again at age 16. The sale at 10 did not happen, and at 14 her family escaped from their home country of Afghanistan to Iran, where she connected with a youth non-profit and started writing music, including her rap that went viral, Daughters for Sale. After her family again tried to sell her at 16, she was able to escape to the US to attend school on scholarship. She was lucky, but she knows many other girls are married away from their families when they are still just children, and Sonita has devoted her life since then to speaking, rapping, writing and advocating to end the practice of child marriage. She knows that all girls deserve to be children, not something bought and sold.
As we know, the road to racial justice is a long one, and still going on today. Many key events in the Civil Rights movement were started by young people, such as Claudette Colvin’s refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger, or Ruby Bridge’s integrating a all-white school. Another part of Civil Rights movement was sit-ins, where Black people went to “whites only” spaces such as pools, parks, or dining counters and sat there in peaceful protest. One of the first sit ins took place in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, when four Black college students, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, inspired by Ghandi and aching to make a difference in the fight for Civil Rights, went to a local Woolworth’s “whites only” lunch counter and asked to be served. They were denied service, but did not leave. Police were called in, but could do nothing, as the young men were causing no disruption. The 4 returned the following day, and the day after that, each time asking to be served, being denied, and then staying there. Over time, more college students, Black and white, joined their cause, and staged sit-ins at other local businesses. During this time, the peaceful protestors were relentlessly verbally abused, heckled and even assaulted by white customers, but they remained impassive, quietly studying and working on coursework. From February until the end of July, the sit-ins continued, until finally, stores began serving Black customers at the same counters as white customers. The sit-ins, started by the brave Joseph, Franklin, Ezell, and David, had done their job.
Many of us have heard about hunger, poverty and homelessness. Children hear about these things and want to help, but often there are not opportunities for the very young to get involved and make a difference. When Joshua Williams was only 4 1/2 he already cared deeply about ending hunger, but he was frustrated that there weren’t organizations that he could volunteer with because of his age. So he started a nonprofit (with the help of his family) that allowed children, even tiny ones, to get involved in helping others! His nonprofit Joshua’s Heart, is totally youth-run and collects toys, food, school supplies and more, and delivers them to people in need in the community. Now in college, Joshua continues to participate in his program, and remains committed to “stomping out hunger,” but has raised and trained other young leaders to take on the work too. He has always been passionate about helping young people find their voice, find their passion, and make positive changes in the world.
If you checked in with yesterday’s Hope hero, you know that in books, representation matters. Marley Dias wanted to see more black girls and women in stories, so she created #1000BlackGirlBooks. Sidney Keys III was also looking for more representation in books. He was fortunate to have an African-American children’s book store in his city, and when he went there he was amazed to see many titles featuring characters that he could relate to. He wanted to connect with other Black boys who loved to read, and asked the book store if he could start a book club specifically for Black boys. He started Books n Bros, a monthly book club for young men specifically in his community, which quickly grew far beyond his city. He now has over 150 boys in the club, from across the United States, and the club meets online so kids from anywhere can participate. It also has a non-profit side which allows people to sponsor memberships to the book club so that anyone can participate, no matter their income. Sidney is such an inspiring young person that Disney+ included him in their documentary series about real-life superheroes! Like Marley, Sidney is committed to ensuring that young Black men see themselves in stories, because he too knows that representation matters.
Most of us love stories. We love reading, or being read to, or writing our own. And for white children, particularly white boys, it is easy to find books with characters that look like them. But there are many kids who have a much harder time finding themselves represented in stories, and representation matters. So Marley Dias, only 10 years old at the time, started a program called #1000BlackGirlBooks, to collect stories about girls and women of color. She collected nearly 11,000 in her first drive, and sent them to schools in the US and Jamaica to help diversify their libraries. In the years since the campaign started, Marley wrote her OWN book and has even produced and hosted a show on Netflix about the importance of Black voices and Black stories. Marley knows that seeing people that look like you in books, tv, movies, politics, everywhere really matters, and she has made it her mission to use her love of reading to help Black girls feel seen.
One of the things that many of us take for granted is learning how to swim. But knowing how to swim (or having access to places to learn) isn’t the case for everyone, and it can be a big problem in parts of the country that experience hurricanes, tropical storms, and floods. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey attacked Louisiana and Texas, flooding communities across the states. In many predominantly Black communities, many of the residents do not know how to swim, and this was true in Hitchcock, Texas. But quiet, video-game-loving teen Virgil Smith did, and when a friend contacted him for help during the storm which had turned into a flash flood, Virgil sprung into action. In an act of incredible bravery, using an air mattress as a flotation device, Virgil swam through his flooded community and rescued 17 people who were stranded in their homes and unable to swim. Tirelessly, Virgil helped the elderly, a mother and her infant, his friend’s entire family, and more. Virgil doesn’t consider himself a hero, he just “felt it was the right thing to do,” but certainly the 17 people whose lives he saved feel otherwise.
Have you ever heard the saying “there’s an app for that”? Well, there seem to be apps for many things, but sometimes we realize that we need an app that doesn’t exist yet! When high school student Aryaman Khandelwal visited India with his family, they noticed that there were many sick people who did not have access to medical care, because of how few doctors there are in certain regions, and that there were people suffering from illnesses and injuries that could be simply treated if the person know what to do! Aryaman, who is quite good with computers. designed a simple app that allows community health workers to collect information from patients, even those who can’t read, put it into the app, and get a recommendation for treatment, or further care from a doctor. This service has now helped hundreds of thousands of people, have easy access to medical care and treatment. Aryaman saw a problem that he felt he had the tools and skills to solve, and created something that can benefit people everywhere!
Lots of us love playing around on computers, and a few of you have probably already done some coding! Programming a computer is a really cool and useful skill, but how many of us could say we created 30 different websites and apps before we turned 16? Well, Avi Schiffman can! Extremely savvy with computers, Schiffman started coding at age 7, and in January of 2020, created a Corona-virus tracker that keeps up-to-date statistics about Covid-19 and other variants worldwide! Within only 3 months, 600 million people had visited the site, and news outlets and governments around the world were using it as the most accurate, timely tracker for the virus. Even epidemiologists (the doctors who study diseases) use it to predict how and where the virus will spread. Avi’s site is still in use, he now has 12 high school students from around the globe who help him run it, and Dr. Fauci considers his site vital to ending the pandemic. Avi could have sold this program and become a millionaire, but he is passionate about the site and wants to keep improving it. For Schiffman, it is all about doing something he loves that can also help others.