Time for Change: one year anniversary!

One year ago today, I pressed publish on my interest project and To Change Our World went live! It went from being a small project to a passionate outlet for encouraging change. Something I found myself always reaching for to work on and improve.

This project has genuinely taught me so much, not just about our world but also about myself. I've actively begun to seek out and listen to diverse perspectives - Queer, people of colour, Black - and have researched what we can do to break down the barriers holding these people back. I've learnt how to take key information - however dire - and structure it in a simple, optimistic way to engage more people, especially adolescents like myself.

I've also become increasingly aware of the huge community of people creating change. When things feel like too much, I remind myself of all the people doing good for our world. I'm reminded that there is hope. Following hope, there can be action and action can bring us change.

Today I share with you a recent poem from the roots of where this project started. This piece is about continuing to make positive changes and take action for a better world, even when people try to stop you. Even when things feel like too much. Thank you to every single person who has encouraged and supported To Change Our World, this is our project after all. Thank you to everyone who has blazed a path before me for us to follow. Here's to all we've accomplished together, and everything still to come.

Time For Change

Call it what you will.

Cover your fears with

rapid fire insults

directed to hurt those

blazing their own path.

Call it what you will.

As we march the streets,

throats raw from

rising passion.

You will not stop us.

Call it what you will.

A joke makes you smile

not retreat.

Puns don't make you think

"I am not worth it."

You are.

Call it what you will.

A world where

loving every part of yourself

is a rebellious act.

I dare you to be that rebel.

Call it what you will.

Global temperatures don't just

'happen to' rise.

Coral doesn't turn

pale with the losses

'just because'.

Call it what you will.

Wishful thinking.

Blind optimism.

Crazy.

Impossible.

I'll call it what it is:

Time for change.

To all those striving for a better world, however small your changes: you make our world better.