Good morning, Hank, it's Friday, the beginning of the 9th annual Project for Awesome. You
can head over to projectforawesome.com to find a link to the 48 hour livestream, info
on donating, and all the amazing perks, and of course, to watch and vote for Project for
Awesome videos. Your votes will determine where much of the money raised is donated.
But for the first half of the P4A, we're raising money for Save the Children and the United
Nations High Commission on Refugees.
So you're probably familiar with the Syrian refugee crisis. Millions of people have been
forced to flee Syria as a result of a horrifying civil war there, and both Save the Children
and the UNHCR are providing massive support to refugee camps from Turkey to Jordan to
Lebanon, where more than a quarter of the people currently living in the country are
refugees, but these organizations both work around the world and today, I wanna focus
on Ethiopia.
So since 2013, conflict in South Sudan has forced more than 250,000 South Sudanese people
to flee to the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Most have left with only whatever belongings
they can carry, and often ferry across the river board in canoes. This woman, Sarah,
explained to a Save the Children employee succinctly why she and her family had to leave:
"The government forces came and started killing people, so we ran away."
Once they get to Ethiopia, most of these people make their way to a camp, where they then
wait to register as refugees. More than 60% of the refugees arriving in Gambella are children,
and many meet this man, Johannus, a child protection officer from Save the Children:
"And here, they are many unaccompanied minors who are separated from their parents."
So Johannus works to help these unaccompanied minors including these boys, all of whom arrived
in Ethiopia separated from their families. It's also Johannus's job to make sure that
safe spaces are created and maintained for children who live in the camps. Within the
camps, Save the Children works to provide basic medical care, including measuring physical
progress to hopefully limit the stunting that can lead to long-term physical and intellectual
disabilities, and also to provide kids with opportunities for play and learning.
Meanwhile, the UNHCR works to get food and basic shelter to the refugees which is a a
massive task for a perennially underfunded organization. For instance, this mother, Mary,
explained that there's no firewood to cook with in the camps, and no machines to mill
grain. She said she wants to return to South Sudan where her family was relatively prosperous
before the fighting broke out, but it's too dangerous.
I know it's easy to feel hopeless in the face of these complex challenges or to turn away
from them. The global refugee crisis is overwhelming, and it's easy to say that this is not our
problem, that these boys are not our boys, but in the past few years, we've seen what
human history has shown us again and again, that on this planet, there is no such thing
as "other people's problems". Disease and poverty and violence are shaped by political
borders but they cannot be controlled by them. Whether it's Ebola or antibiotic resistance,
or the civil war in Syria, or the refugees in Gamballa, we all lose when we imagine that
there are no consequences to turning away from the biggest human challenges. These unaccompanied
children face an exceptionally difficult future, but it is not a hopeless one. We know it isn't
hopeless because we've seen the success that humans have when we come together to support
and empower the poorest and most disenfranchised among us.
Infant mortality has gone down by half in the last 25 years. The percentage of kids
in school has skyrocketed, and overall global poverty has diminished, but the global refugee
population hasn't been this high since World War II, and more than half of them are children.
These refugees, in accordance with international law and also with whatever higher law might
exist, need to be protected. We can't afford to have a generation of marginalized kids
with no access to healthcare or education, and that's why I don't see donations to organizations
like Save the Children or the UNHCR as gifts, I see them as investments. We know that healthier,
better educated kids become happier, more productive adults, and we know that the cycle
of poverty can be broken, but these kids need our investment. So I hope you'll join me in
supporting them, again, on this, the first day of the Project for Awesome, all the donations
to our charity The Foundation to Decrease World Suck will be split between Save the
Children and the UNHCR, and the money raised after that will go to support charities chosen
by you at projectforawesome.com.
If you want to make a donation directly to the Foundation, you can do that by clicking
on this fancy new card that Google has made. There's no fee with the transaction, which
is amazing, and Google will match every dollar donated through this card up to $100,000,
so please help us take some of Google's money, and again, you can go to projectforawesome.com
to find the fundraiser there and all the perks and stuff and to follow along with the livestream
madness.
Thank you, happy Project for Awesome, and as we say in my hometown of Nerdfighteria,
don't forget to be awesome.
Endscreen, Hank always says I should make an endscreen, yes, I know this video was more
than 4 minutes long, and therefore, I will probably be punished. I have accepted this
fate. This is your last chance to use the donation card unless you rewind the video.
I will see you at projectforawesome.com and in the livestream, bye!