"Horton Hears A Who"... Can You?

If you are not yet familiar with the story by Dr. Suess of “Horton Hears A Who” it is a story of discovery and salvation all embodied within a children’s book about a big hearted elephant, Horton. This elephant discovers a speck of dust floating through the air aimlessly and hears something shout from the speck of dust. Our humongous Horton decides that someone or someones must be living on that speck of dust and he goes about against all odds to save the world on the speck of dust. That minuscule world, “Whovill”, consists of families, friends, neighbors and governments.

Horton endures ridicule and hardship from his jungle neighbors until finally; the story ends with the animals in the jungle (all those that shunned and mocked Horton for believing a world could exist on a speck of dust) finally hearing for themselves the voices of all the minuscule “Who’s” on the speck of dust. These animals then, not only believed there were people living on the speck of dust but they further decided to help Horton protect that world.

What a wonderful story (now a major animated movie) for our children to hear at bedtime. Horton heard and protected a minuscule world; made that world known to the other inhabitants of his jungle and finally the other jungle animals pledged to protect the tiny world of “Who” too!

Yet this story begs the question, Can we hear the “Who’s” in our world today? There are hundreds of thousands of families or widows and children ‘displaced’ in Kenya that are crying to be heard and many who are dying as you read this blog. There are others who are suffering untold cruelty and human indignities in Tibet while we sit in our offices on soft, ergo dynamic chairs. Where I currently live I daily pass people living far below my preferred standards yet they are faring much better than those in Kenya, Tibet, tornado and flood ravaged areas of the United States as well as innumerable other areas in our world.

What can we do? Horton spoke out after he heard the “Who”. We can donate that money that we were going to use to go out to dinner or we can go through our closets and find clothes, shoes and heaven knows what else that we have forgotten is there and donate those things to the charities that will truly benefit the people. We can raise the awareness of others in our workplace, church or playgroups simply by talking about the crisis and having suggestions of how others can help.

There are a few organizations I would recommend that utilize donations extremely well;:

Humanitarian Services - LDS Church www.lds.org/humanitarian
Catholic Charities www.catholiccharitiesusa.org
International Red Cross www.icrc.org/eng
UNICEF www.unicef.org/

Horton heard a ‘Who’… Can You?