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Take the Vow of Silence and Change the World

On November 20th, thousands will fight for the rights of the suffering people around the world who cannot stand up for their rights. And you’ll hear nothing.

Free the Children’s Vow of Silence is coming up soon – a fact that haunts me night and day, since I’m one of the people organizing it at my school. It was quite a success last year, and as we are hoping for bigger and better, it’s going to require some hard work…

Let me describe Vow of Silence as simply as I can: you don’t talk for 24 HOURS. What’s more, you don’t go on Facebook, MSN, Twitter, NOR DO YOU TEXT. Omigod! I know! How shall we ever survive?

All kidding aside, it IS an incredibly difficult challenge, and you might not last the whole day. Last year, I had a few people come up to me and say that they would participate if it was anything else rather than talking. Yeah, it’s really quite inconvenient, but in today’s busy, chaotic society, maybe the best thing to get people’s attention is – well, silence.

Socializing with our friends, going on facebook and texting are essential parts of a teenager’s life. Yeah, it will be hard, but what if we believed in something so much that we were willing to take on a challenge? What if we cared about the world so much that we decided to go without the things that matter to us? That’s our beliefs and thoughts in action. And that’s the kind of passion that will rock the world.

So think about the Vow. Most schools will be doing something similar, so maybe you could do it with friends at school. If not, all the resources like pledge forms and info cards are available on Free the Children’s website.

There are lots of ways you can do this: get some friends together and make it into a contest. If it’ll be too hard to not talk for a whole day, commit to staying silent for at least a few hours. Change your status on facebook and twitter. If you really need to talk, then maybe don’t text. And trust me, you won’t die.

Vow of Silence is just one of the many actions that students can access. But it’s actually pretty fun, really interesting, and it’s an awesome conversation-starter (when you can talk, that is). If we care, why shouldn’t we show it? So consider doing it seriously, and afterwards, post your experiences here. I’d love to hear about them.