Social Issues

Author Simon Boudreault

Published December 8, 2017

Word count 483

Seeing the political situation today, the world's development in the next decades is uncertain. With Trump elected as President, a lot of progress achieved in the past years in terms of environment protection is at risk due to the President's global warming denying administration. While many now believe that everyone must wait another three years until we can "come back to normal", some organizations are working hard so the world keeps moving forward instead of backwards. I'm talking about NGOs and Activist Groups.

These organizations are often run by unpaid volunteers who spend hundreds of hours fighting for causes that make the world a better place. However, as non-profit organizations, they often can't invest a lot of money if any on advertisement messages to encourage people to help them in achieving their goals. Therefore, liking a Facebook page, following an organization on Twitter or accepting to be put in an email list is a very small sacrifice to make, and it goes a long way for these organizations. Therefore, in the future don't be afraid to like, follow or subscribe to an NGO or Activist Group as that act itself helps those organizations a lot, and you can simply unlike, unfollow or unsubscribe from them if they bother you too much (which they generally don't).

Another way to help is to sign and share petitions or letters to political entities. Petitions and letters are one of the main means of action for Activists as they put pressure on governments, companies, groups, and media to talk about a specific issue. The larger the amount of people who sign, the more important an issue becomes to the eyes of stakeholders. Signing a petition online is now easier than ever as you generally just need to click a button, give your name and email address. It can take less than 30 seconds to sign an online petition, which can be done FROM ANYWHERE! Various organizations are fighting for issues by gathering large amounts of signatures before sending the petitions to the Senate, Congress or News Channels. The Nature Conservancy, the National Parks Conservation Association, Earth Justice or the WWF are recognizable organisations that constantly have new petitions to support for the protection of the environment. But of course, there are other Activist groups that fight for other issues such as Animal Protection, Human Rights, Women's Rights, or LGBT rights. Activistonthego is an Activist Group that gathers all the pages to Petitions and Letters from various organizations so you can easily find the petitions that you want to support.

To conclude, NGOs and Activist Groups can benefit from every simple act of support. It is very easy for anyone to help and it doesn't cost anything. So, in the future, spending a couple of minutes of your day to help an organization is a small sacrifice to make in order to help make the world a better place.