Action Over Awareness
It was a Saturday afternoon in May 2016, and I was on my phone scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I saw a female friend of mine doing push-ups. I didn’t give it a second thought until I turned up the audio and heard her mentioning returning the following day for another round. I continued scrolling and happened upon a number of my friends participating in the 22 Push-Up Challenge to raise awareness for fallen soldiers. I was immediately reminded of the Ice Bucket Challenge from a few years prior that circled the globe raising awareness about ALS. However, in that moment, I had to get honest with myself—there wasn’t a lot that I could articulate about ALS. I saw swillions of people dumping buckets of ice, yet I was no more knowledgeable about ALS than I was before the challenge swept the Internet. Yes, I was aware, but that wasn’t enough for me. I needed more, and I wanted to do more than a few push-ups for my social media buddies. And that’s where Freedom Kids came from. To this day, I’m still not one hundred percent clear on what it means to be “aware,” but I’m absolutely clear on what it means to take action.
