Photo: Young people meet with a senator on Capitol Hill. (Getty Images)
Stephanie Figgins is a 21-year-old senior at George Washington University. After learning about the atrocities happening in Darfur, she started a STAND chapter at her high school with a few friends, and went on to serve for two years as its Washington, D.C., college outreach coordinator. She continues to advocate and lobby for genocide prevention, most recently from her phone.
Last week, I picked up a call from an unknown number; to my surprise, it was my newly elected congressman from Arizona’s Fifth District, David Schweikert.
The day before, I had called Schweikert’s office via 1-800-GENOCIDE, a hotline developed to make lobbying your elected officials on Sudan and genocide prevention a less intimidating experience. I left a message about my opposition to across-the-board cuts to the foreign aid budget (already less than 1 percent of our national budget)–including slashes to funding for disaster assistance, migration and refugee assistance, and crises. I hadn’t expected a call back.
Read the full post at the MTV act Blog.
