30,000

These are not my words, but I thought that they were too good not to share... Thirty thousand. That number could be considered huge or quite small, depending on your perspective. If you are talking about population, that is the size a small town. In regard to time, 30,000 seconds is actually only a little over eight hours. Thirty thousand grains of sand wouldn't get you very far in building a sand castle. However, if you received a $30,000 raise, you might go out and celebrate. But here's another perspective: 30,000 is the number of children under age 5 who die every day from a preventable cause. That's right every day. That's like 30 large elementary schools disappearing from the face of the earth on Monday and again on Tuesday and so on weekends, too.

What's stealing the future from so many children? It's not some mysterious plague or natural disaster. We're talking about things like malaria, diarrhea, measles and unclean water. What's unconscionable is that nearly every one of those deaths could be prevented for as little as $1 per child. Yes, we have issues in our city that monopolize the news, like the rising cost of housing, local politics and traffic delays. But we rarely hear about something as devastating as tens of thousands of children dying in suffering every day as we go about our daily routines.

It's time we started demanding more of ourselves. I would like to urge readers of this newspaper to educate themselves beyond the issues within our borders. Find out what's going on in the rest of the world and then take a step to do something about it. A good place to start is compassion.com/youcan. There are practical ways we can all get involved in the fight against poverty. Thirty thousand. What does that number mean to you now?