ONE Story: Emily Stivers
When I was in high school, I used to feel frustrated by all the horrible problems in the world. I felt so small and powerless to solve them.
Then during my junior year, I had a great teacher, Dr. Divizzio, who introduced me to the philosophy of John Rawls. I didn’t understand everything I read at the time, but one idea really stood out for me: that we should help the least advantaged people in the world first. It’s part of Rawls’ theory on distributive justice, and I really took it to heart.
How do you decide which people are the least advantaged? So many different kinds of oppression and disadvantage plague our world. But for me, the most outrageous of these was child hunger. What could be worse than the slow torture of starving to death. Who could be less deserving of that fate than an innocent child. And given the abundance of food in the developed world, what could be more easily corrected. For me, hungry children were truly the least advantaged people in the world, and I wanted to do my part to help them.
It wasn’t until college that my brother told me about ONE and its mission to end global poverty and preventable disease. By sharing my mission of feeding the hungry with millions of others around the world, I felt empowered and strong. ONE gives me a voice and helps me use it through advocacy and raising the awareness of others, just as Dr. Divizzio, my brother, and my friends at ONE have educated me.
You can be ONE for the world’s poorest, too. Sign up for the ONE Campus Challenge under your favorite school’s banner today at: http://one.org/campus/.
-Emily Stivers
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