Children

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” -Sir Winston Churchill, author and former U.K. Prime Minister

The responsibility of the world’s children is ours; collectively we hold the power for greatness in the palms of our hands. Children have the possibility of greatness and the responsibility to protect, guide and foster the potential in each child is ours.

“Just because a child’s parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.” - Marian Wright Edelman, American children’s rights activist and president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Regardless of the reasons, the state, race, religion or social status of a child’s parents, each child should be born into this world with an equal foot and stake in the future. Sadly this is not the reality and millions of children across the globe are marked before birth by the status of their parents. It is this disadvantaged at the beginning of life that leaves many children lost in the grey shadows of an unknown future.

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our young people – one of these is roots, the other is wings.” -Hodding Carter

We seek to give our children everything we can, wanting them to have infinite possibilities and striving to see our children have all that we did not. However often in our quest to give children all they need for the future we miss the key essentials to a prosperous and happy future. Life is demanding and the world is constantly changing around us, leaving the needs and wants of our children muddled together and thus parents all too often loose focus on the true essential needs of their children. One can easily become consumed by materialism giving children the latest gadgets, the best clothes, newest games, all in an attempt to better the life and future of the child. Nonetheless in hindsight it is not the things one has in childhood that they will look back fondly on.

In a world where one works to be the best in school, the best our field, etc., we often fail to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. Forgetting that in the end the most important things are not what we have, but what we have done and experience and who we have become. Whilst the technologies and advances of today give children a world of opportunity, let us not forget the endless value of giving our children a solid future based on the experiences of the past with the encouragement and freedom to be whatever they choose.

“A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to hear children’s speech only as a foreign language, or as a lie…. Children have been treated … as congenital fibbers, fakers and fantasisers.”
- Beatrix Campbell, British journalist.

Do we hear the voices of the worlds children? If we are not listening, then we are not hearing the voices of the furture, and who has more input into the future than they who will inherit it.  Children often look at the world with more clarity than adults, they see not only the reality, but the posiblity of change.  Children look forward, while as adults we tend too often to look back.  If we are to make true and lasting change in our world then we must begin by listening to our children.

“Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.” 
- Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), Italian poet and philosopher, from Zibaldone Scelto.

It is true that as we grow our eye’s seem to change, we seem to lose the wide and open vision that we had in childhood.  Our eye’s no longer see everything with hopefulness, but begin to see things through the lens of doubt.

We must look out on the world and to the future as children do, with hope, if we are to see true change, prosperity and peace in our world.  Let us go and put aside our negative visions and see the world with the eye’s of a child…let us see a better tomorrow! 

“I implore you to see with a child’s eyes, to hear with a child’s ears, and to feel with a child’s heart.”
- Antonio Novello, Doctor (1944- )


In order for us to see the world, and see it clearly one must see it from the view of a child. The perceived innocence of a child is often misconstrued as a lack of knowledge or incite, when in reality it is openness and a fresh perspective on what adults can no longer see as time has clouded our vision and impaired our hearing.  To see peace in the future we must look to look out onto the world with an inquisitive eye, an open mind, a full heart, and learn to listen to the silence.  Never is it too late to look at the world or life from the eyes of a child.

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” - Unknown

Children truly are the teachers of life, they teach us how to laugh, how to play, how to enjoy the simple things in life. When you are around children one finds it impossible not to smile, and why? Because children see the truth and beauty that surrounds them. Even in the face of darkness children easily find the light, as they seem to see so much more clearly and see past the suffering.

Watch a child today and learn how to live and see how to take from life what one should. More often we should not only hear the voices of youth, but look through the eyes of childhood, and then we can work to live in a world that is more at peace.

“Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Writer (1809-1894)

‘Out of the mouth of babes’, they so often say when a child just blurts out the truth, and it appears that truth telling is something all too often left behind in childhood. As we grow older the colors of the world begin to fade, as children we see the world in a rainbow of colors, then suddenly as adults it all begins to appear in shades of gray. Yet, while children are the ones who remain so unclouded by politics, greed, and the trivialness of every day life; their truthfulness is mistaken for innocence and naivety.

When we seek guidance and incite into so many of our worlds dilemmas, one must really ought hear the voices of children.  How different our world could be if only we would listen to the children for whose future we work to protect!

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul, then the way it treats its children.” - Nelson Mandela

Children are the global natural resources of the future, if we choose to ignore them we choose to ignore the prosperity of the future. Children are one investment which we should never be taken for granted or put on hold. However far to many children enter into this world into a society which underestimates their value, and which fails to invest in their worth.

Children often born into a society where childhood rarely ceases to exist, forced to endure the labor most adults loath and fear; to toil in the fields, swim the danger waters for fish, risk life and limb in the minds, etc. Children are recruited into the worlds most brutal armies, forced to commit and witness atrocities for which no man, woman or child should ever have to see. Young girls and boys our touted as sexual slaves, treated like disposable commodities. Girls are marginalized, treated as an inferior as societies continually fail to see their wealth.

Societies must begin to do some soul searching and begin to change the way in which we treat our children, for if not we will only have a future of instability and lost children to look forward to.

“Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life.” - Ralph J. Bunche

The words of Ralph Bunche, reminded me one about the true meaning of freedom. For is one truly free if they must depend on others for the basic essentials of survival and humanity? War’s do no end overnight, homes are not suddenly rebuilt, the land is not suddenly lush, families are not instantly reunited, and so forth. Freedom does lead to peace, but only when freedom is accompanied by sustainable development that is led by those who’s futures depend on freedom and peace. It is this instable rebuilding after freedom that can lead to the demise of peace.

The axe of freedom does not just fall on peace, it falls on injustice and once injustice is gone peace is possible. But peace does not just happen, and it does not happen over night, it takes years to build stable peace. Peace is found on the back of education, gender equality, adequate healthcare, nutrition as well as democracy. Peace is found among children, as they have disproportionately been effected by the ravages of war, and therefore they too must be included in the process of rebuilding their country to ensure that a lasting peace is found. To find true peace no one must be left behind, no one must be forgotten!