"if you ask me what i came into this world to do, i will tell you: i came to live out loud."

~Emile Zola

Live8.

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Every 3 seconds, a child in Africa dies due to no aid.

Can you wrap your head around that?

I think most of us eat more calories in a day than a child in starvation eats in his/her lifetime, which isnt very long to begin with in the first place.

If Live8 means anything to any of you on my list, please check out www.one.org. The cancellation of Africas debt may just save more lives in one fell swoop than what any of us could achieve in our lifetimes. Its kinda scary knowing that while most of us are wondering about which band/celebrity to idolize today, that there are people dying every 3 seconds due to poverty and no aid. Differentiate LiveAid from Live8. Live8 was maybe a poltical movement, mostly poverty awareness about the concerts, about the celebrities endorsing something other than the latest makeup product and scent. Weird knowing it takes a celebrity to tell us something like this is happening in todays world.

Live8 happened on July 2, 2005. Its kinda weird knowing that it takes celebrities involvement in this day and age, in our media obsessed generation, to sit up and be aware to the fact that poverty really does still exist. So maybe the people who went (for free, if Im not mistaken, free concerts featuring big big names) for the Live8 concerts (and two more being organized in Edinburgh and Moscow, I think) didnt really go for the poverty awareness factor as for the entertainment factor, but these free concerts, the movement of Bob Geldoff to try and make people aware of the mind boggling poverty still hurting Africa, I think thats a good movement.

G8 is coming up, and although I cant, for the life of me, tell you what the 8 countries are, I can say that theyre the wealthy countries, the ones that can actually make a difference, and the leaders of these nations probably already know how powerful they are. But the citizens of these nations need to empower themselves too.I just hope they use that power for something good, you know?

Maybe it doesnt matter to you. But, really, how can we not care? Remember, live8 didnt ask for money. But theyre just asking us to be aware, to acknowledge that extreme poverty still exists. I cant wrap my mind around it,really, but for a second, lets just get out of our coach potato existences and just be aware of the fact that as we speak, children are dying. Nameless faces. They die and no one even knows they existed.

Maybe we cant give them money. But we can at least acknowledge they existed. You know? Acknowledge that severe extreme poverty was a cause to their death. Not drugs, not alcohol, not cigarettes and not a mental illness. poverty.

We should acknowledge they lived.

We can at least give them that.