Category: Human Services/General I am part of Amnesty International. This group is a human rights organization. I joined the club at my high school. Although I am not close to most of the members of the club, I know that the people are amazing and passionate. This whole group is amazing. It motivates me to do even more, like sign online petitions and click daily sites to help. I am honestly glad that I took part, and I definately will next year. The main event that our club held was close to the end of the school year. In June 2008, our Amnesty International group held a Human Rights Conference, inviting guest speakers from across the world to talk about their experiences and to educate us on worldwide crises at our school. We invited other people from other schools, cities, and organizations to join and learn. This year at the conference, we focused on Africa. The topics were things like Human Trafficking, Darfur, AIDS. Our keynote speaker, Carl Wilkens, was the last American to get out of Rwanda, after helping people in the genocide. His speech started the conference. It was very very touching. After the opening speaker, we broke up into different groups of varying topics. I learned about the Darfur crises and about Human trafficking - (not only in Africa, but in places all across the world - including the US!) Carl Wilkens said to us that it was amazing that high school kids like us would give up their Saturday mornings to talk about a heavy subject of the world, like genocide. It was worth it. I learned so much. And I am sure the other 199 people did, too. Below are pictures of our conference shirts. The front is the question WHY? with Africa as the question mark. The back shows a quote from John Lennon: "A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream together is a reality." That quote was perfect for the conference, proving that teamwork is needed to make a difference. The whole point of the conference was to get people together to make that difference. The point of the conference was to educate. By educating people, knowledge spreads. Spreading knowledge motivates action. Motivating action can help the world become a better place.