MEDIAS
My Message to World Leaders: One Person at a Time
20 / 10 / 09
Photography and Video by Emily Troutman
Music by Matthew Dosberg
http://www.emilytroutman.blogspot.com
Dear World Leaders,
I'm sending you this message from the United States of America, from Baltimore, Maryland, where just a few days ago, my friends lost their baby. And in the night, when they went to the hospital, their house was robbed. What happened to them reminded me of what I wanted to say to you.
Everyday, I want you to wake up and know that you work for 6.7 billion real people, one person at a time. People with children and dreams and stories.
Everyday, I want you to wake up and know that you were given a life and a gift that most people weren't lucky enough to receive.
These days, I find that I wake up and I think about my time as a photographer in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Where I saw what life looks like in a country where 20% of babies will die before they're five years old, where tens of thousands of women are raped each year, where 17,000 UN peacekeepers can't seem to help.
I want us both to agree to say one true thing out loud everyday. To remember one real person. To remind ourselves that our tragedies—yours and mine—are lived and felt one person at a time; just like our hope, our renewal, our future can also be lived and carried out into the world, one person at a time. You have a chance to be that person.
So make a promise with me:
I promise to humble myself.
I promise to grieve.
I promise to bow down to truth.
I promise to argue.
I promise to listen and to live with intention.
I promise to know my own strength.
I promise to risk something.
I promise to stop talking about what hasn't been done
and start doing something different.
We are 6.7 billion real people who want to be remembered, who only want to live a life as good and as safe as the one you live. If we promise to think of you, to work with you; I hope you'll promise to think of us, to work for us. One person, one small baby, one dream at a time.
Sincerely,
Emily Troutman
