The Story
Conner desperately read fact after fact, and story after story, until, overwhelmed with emotions of compassion and injustice, he had to close the magazine. Just a few moments ago, Conner had begun flipping through the magazine, never dreaming that the one picture that caught his eye would intertwine his life with the lives of thousands worldwide. It was a picture of a skeletal-looking baby, with toothpick-thin arms and legs and wide hopeless eyes that seemed to leap out of the photograph and straight into Conner’s reality. Pulling his eyes away from those of the infant’s, he slowly started to read the article on the following page. It shocked him. The article emphasized the tremendous poverty effecting millions worldwide, and highlighted the lack of clean drinking water in many parts of the world. The baby with the hopeless eyes was a victim of severe dehydration. Although Conner had learned about poverty before and even heard about the horrific conditions of third world countries in every arena from infomercials to church sermons, for the first time, he felt the tension between his relatively carefree life as an American teenager and the survivalist life of others. He knew it wasn’t right. But what could he do? He was only 16.While his friends were making summer vacation plans and grumbling about final exams, Conner was trying to think of a way that he could bring relief to people living in poverty. In the middle of the summer he approached four of his closest friends Logan, Dan, Kyle and Jared. For the first time, Conner told his friends about the article and his
