My good friend Mallory is working for a non profit organization called Falling Whistles. Please read these beautiful words and help the Congolese children

http://www.fallingwhistles.com/splash/index.php




I want to share it with you.



A couple years ago a man named Sean Carasso was in Africa doing a shoe drop for TOMS shoes. When the mission was over, he and a couple buddies decided to explore Africa. They ended up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Here Sean stumbled along an illegal prison where he met five young boys. After talking with the boys. The boys were escaped child soldiers—whistleblowers.

Boys too small to hold a gun were given a whistle. Their sole objective was to blow the whistle to make enough noise to distract the enemy and absorb the first round of bullets with their bodies. In falling, they acted as a human shield for the other boys.



Through madness and tears, Sean wrote in his journal, “With falling whistles, their only choice is to feign death, or face it.” He sent out a blog entry with extreme urgency to his family and friends, who forwarded the story with the same urgency. Kids were dying. Read closely: children were dying. I can’t convey this properly, it’s something you kind of just have to think about I guess.

Returning to America, Sean didn’t have a fucking clue of what to do. All he knew were these kids were defenseless, women were being brutally, brutally raped, and that this was now the largest war in the world since WWII. And no one knew any of this.

Sean’s friend Marcus came to him with a whistle: a simple whistle, providing the unique opportunity to speak up for the whistleblowers in Congo. We now knew that their weapon could be our voice.

It has. We are working with 270 war-affected Congolese children in a Congolese founded, owned, and operated rehabilitation program.

That’s what we’re working for, slowly but surely. We are also educating ourselves. Here are some of the atrocities purposefully swept under the rug:

-Women are being raped. Not once, but multiple times. Many of the soldiers in the rebel groups, the extremists, the terrorists, ‘re-rape’ in order to prevent a woman from being able to reproduce, leading to the extinction of her lineage.

-Children are forced to the front lines with a whistle.

-Children are forced to the front lines with AK-47s.

-If they run, they are tortured. Brutally tortured.

-The ‘civilized world’ as we like to call ourselves, is the cause of the problem. The war exists largely due to ‘conflict minerals’ which are found in our electronics. Our -consumerism=their war.

-Children are cut open and injected with drugs to smuggle across borders.

I am at a loss for words. I just keep thinking. We said “Never Again” after the Holocaust. In the past 10 years, an documented 5.4 million Congolese have died, while countless other deaths go unreported. Many more will live, suffering from the affects of the war.



Never again?



I cannot justify the death of one child. I cannot defend those who turn a blind eye for their inaction. Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous.

What is the difference between a 5-year-old here and a Congolese 5-year-old? Is there not a common moral fiber running through the veins of every human being? My life is NOT more valuable. Neither is yours. These are humans dying. For me, this is not an Africa problem. It’s not an America problem. The blame game is over. It is childish and it is time for everyone to set aside their vendettas and look at the bigger picture.



If you can give me a reason about why these human-on-human atrocities are permissible, I welcome it.



For now, this is what we are up against. I would rather think you will not dismiss this letter, it has taken many drafts and many hours. I don’t like telling these stories. I don’t like telling them because they are not stories, they are truths. It’s so sick.

My request is simple. I want you to buy a whistle. It costs about $22 to feed one kid for the whole year in the program. To put one child through the rehabilitation for the year, it’s only $90. 100% of whistle sales goes to these programs in Congo.

Buying a whistle gives you the opportunity to share this story and use their weapon of war as a weapon of peace, and a tool to elevate common conversation. It shows your protest for whatever injustice you stand for.

Please buy a whistle and help me tell others what’s going on.

I love you, thank you.



Mallory