Meet the rest of the interns!

So as some of you may already know, our very own Tori will be an intern with Falling Whistles this summer! We’re so proud of her and can’t wait to see what she brings back to campus in the fall. She will be an intern in the DC Advocacy Office. Kate who was also active with the Vandy Falling Whistles during her time at Vanderbilt is also interning with FW this summer, but here is a chance for you to meet some of the other interns.

Wish them luck! Send them some FW love; they are going to do great and wonderful things!

-Terica

You’re Making a Difference!

Keep Signing.

Keep Sharing.

Keep Fighting for Peace in Congo.

Your voice is being heard. I know it seems like your voice may be the only voice, but that  voice has already combined with thousands of whistleblowers. I love this new video! I wanted to share with you guys if you haven’t checked it out yet! If you’ve signed the petition–awesome. Now get more people to sign.

There are days for conversations and there are days for action. Today is a day for action.

I know right now for some of us, we’re thinking about finals, graduation, grad school, job interviews, and fifty other stressful things for the next two weeks. So I challenge you to come up with a creative way to share the petition with those you haven’t already shared it with, if you’re like me and have exhausted your contact list/facebook/twitter resources.  I’ve decided to set the petition as my homepage, if anyone needs to borrow my computer, they’ll see the petition first. Even if I’m so stressed about my next exam that I don’t bring it up in conversation, it will definitely cause someone to ask me the question.

Leave your ideas in the comments or shoot me an email, because we would love to use them!

Peace & love,

Terica

Free and Fair

Check out Falling Whistles latest video and sign their petition!

 

This was taken from their facebook event “Watch. Sign. Share.”

 

Whistleblowers & Freedom Fighters,

This is a global call to arms.

…Now is the time we need you to stand up and use your most powerful weapon – your voice.

November 27, 2011 the Congolese are having an election – their 3rd in history and perhaps the first chance to determine their own destiny. For Falling Whistles, all of 2011 will be about building a global alliance to ensure Free and Fair Elections.

On Monday April 4, 2011 we are launching our biggest campaign yet. Our Ask? That the State Department and Obama Administration immediately appoint a Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Congo. For the US to appoint a Special Envoy they must recognize that this urgent ask is demanded by the people, like yourself, of the United States. This is where you come in. In order for the US Government to recognize the urgency, the us’s, must speak up.

This Monday we will be launching our new video toward FREE and FAIR elections, our petition for a Special Envoy and our strategic brief. We need you to spread the word, so that by the end of next week we have 200,000 signatures that our Advocacy office in DC can use to show public will.

April 4th, visit www.fallingwhistles.com, watch the video, sign the petition, and spread the word.

Your voice matters.

Toward peace,
FW

Together we can move toward peace.

-Terica

The Benefit Concert

It is now T-minus 5 days until the benefit concert!  Here at the Falling Whistles Mayfield, we are hard at work on publicity and last-minute organization things.  It’s been a long road getting here, but this concert is going to be better than last year’s.  We have Yves Muya coming to tell us his story of growing up in the Congo and running from the Congo – which should lend a more personal light on what Falling Whistles is doing.

So, on Friday, April 8 at 8pm, come to Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema to hear some awesome music and a personal story about the Congo.  See you there!

~amber

Our 100th Post!

Wow!

I can’t believe it’s been two years. So much has happened on this campus. I’ve seen so many changes and I’m proud to be a part of what Falling Whistles is doing here in Nashville.  I’ve seen struggles and triumphs and a few SHAMBLES moments. As I prepare to graduate, and in some ways leave Vandy Falling Whistles behind as a new group of people take the reigns, I have great hopes for what the future of will hold. I’m sure I’ll be around tweeting and blogging and of course whistleblowing.

In the past two years we’ve had visits with Sean and David, like Tori’s mentioned before I don’t think any of us will ever forget Sean’s first late night visit to the Mayfield; the visit with the amazing FW crew from the Fall tour and Yves (we can’t wait for him to come back for the spring concert!);  the really cool skype tour with Justine through the FW headquarters long before any remodel; our very first concert with Sean and the first FW event on Ticketmaster (fun trivia fact);  our first Holiday Campaign;  meetings and events and emails and crazy publicity things we thought would work; we got a blog and a twitter and amazingly loyal followers; speakeasies with friends and strangers that became friends and best of all…conversations.  I’m sure I’ve missed something, but these last two years have changed my life and I’ll never be the same. Thank you.

I know we spend our undergraduate careers complaining, and I have certainly done my fair share of complaining, but I wanted to spend this moment being grateful. I love the Mayfield project–I’m spending this time being grateful, but I can be honest too, right? If I were any other senior, this isn’t where I would choose to live on campus. So, thank you, Vanderbilt Housing (how many times do they get the shout out they deserve?) for giving us the opportunities to make this happen. We really wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the support of our Mayfield Program Coordinators, Charleson and Megan. As freshmen, the class of 2011 complained about “Housing” and “the man” but when I began working on this project these were the people that wanted us to succeed and I quickly realized that what I was gaining was much more important than anything I was missing by living on the Commons for a year. As cheesy as it sounds, I’ve learned so much from this project. I’ve really loved giving back and I’ve even learned from the moments when I’ve failed as a leader. I’m excited and nervous about what the future will bring, but I know that our 100th post is just the beginning for FW at Vanderbilt.

For Peace,

Terica

Falling Whistles Concert

Like Abby said, we are so excited about our artists for our April 8th concert. Both are local singer/songwriters, and we think it’s gonna be a great show.

Here’s a few links to some of their songs.

Sam and Dain, “Too Little, Too Much”

Jake Ousley, “Back to Carolina”

I can’t wait! It’s going to be awesome!

-Brooke

Get Excited!!

We had our weekly Mayfield meeting last night and I am getting really excited about the benefit concert coming up in only two weeks from this Friday! We have some awesome music lined up! It is also really exciting that we will be hearing from Yves Muya, a Congolese activist and Falling Whistles representative!

If you want a taste of what we have to look forward to, check out the links below!! Get excited!

http://jakeousley.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-and-Dain/170771692969488

The Poverty Awareness Challenge

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Today I went to dinner with some of the girls in our Mayfield; Terica, Ruthie, and me. We were discussing poverty in the Congo, and how we as Americans have no point of reference for understanding what the poor go through on a daily basis. Since there is really no way for us to really know what the lives of the poor (and I mean the really poor, not based on American standards) are like, we decided to try to get a little bit closer to an understanding by challenging ourselves to live without some of the things that we are accustomed to having everyday, but that most of the world lives without. We are launching this half-semester poverty awareness challenge or PAC which will be in effect throughout the rest of this semester!

Here are the details:

1. No wearing shoes, except for in class, restaurants, and public bathrooms.Later on, we will have a day where we don’t wear shoes at any time.

2. No eating meat (many Congolese do not eat meat, or very little).

3. No spending money on anything that is not on the “Vandy Card” (so meals are ok, but nothing else).

4. No eating dessert of any kind.

5. No drinks except water (we realize that very few people in poverty-stricken have access to water, but we don’t think it would be wise to say no drinks at all).

So that is the challenge! Who wants to take it with us? My guess is that the next month and a half will be eye-opening.

-Brooke

The Invention of Peace

Since my schedule is impossible to work with, I’m taking quite a few “random” classes this semester, but there have been moments where I have been really grateful for these “random” classes. It’s my last semester and I decided I don’t want to leave Vanderbilt not learning as many things as possible–I also don’t want to leave Vandy without taking as many writing courses as possible, which is why I’m taking this particular class.  So, I show up and wonder what will happen today?

Lately we’ve been discussing war, my least favorite topic…I’d much rather discuss peace.

On this particular day our discussion topic was Margaret Mead’s “Warfare is Only An Invention–Not a Biological Necessity.” Her piece is essentially about how war is an “invention” and not something inherent within us. She argues that the only way to find peace is to invent something to replace war.

I would first like to say: I’m full of hope. I dream of peace.

However, at this point, the invention of war has been spread to all society. It’s not something we can take back; the memory of it would still be in our minds. It is hard to imagine countries erasing the past and being able to trust each other. Although we would like to imagine an ideal world in which war doesn’t exist, I don’t know if it is entirely realistic to “erase” war completely. I obviously think we can resolve conflicts but I don’t think we can completely erase the threat of war. Hypothetically, if we were to convince each nation to dispose of their entire supply of weapons, we haven’t erased “war.” Also dealing with past war still haunts us, as suspicion and tension will always be between countries that have fought against each other.  In my public policy class we were discussing why it’s impossible to imagine the global climate issue being addressed on a global scale, because of tension between nations dealing with other issues.

It’s doubtful that there is an “invention” greater than war that Mead suggests, but I think this would be a great brainstorming idea for the next ‘Society meeting. I know we focus on FW, but for a moment it would be interesting to think about what would it take for world peace in general. What “invention” is greater than war, that can serve all the functions of war, and can also serve as peace?

For the invention of peace,

-Terica

Defining Poverty

I read an interesting article in “The Economist” the other day, and its message has been haunting me ever since. It was an article comparing poverty in North America to poverty in the Congo, and its statistics on the the living standards of the poor in America shocked me. Among the 37 million people officially classed as poor in the United States, only 6% live in homes with more occupants than rooms, and three-quarters have air conditioning. The Congolese surgeon featured in the article lives in a 4-bedroom home occupied by 12 people, and eats meats about twice a month, which he considers to be a luxury. In the states, most children eat twice as much protein as is recommended, which adds to the strange phenomenon we see in America: the poor are overweight while the rich stay thin. “A typical poor household in America has two televisions, cable or satellite reception, and VCR or a DVD player,” the article stated.

The article went on to say that, compared to the rest of the population, the poor in America do live with significantly less. They complain about the cost of motor oil instead of bread perhaps, but they need to drive in order to work. But I can’t help wonder, if our society didn’t teach us that having ones own room is necessary, that cable television is a need rather than a luxury, perhaps the poor could spend their money on other things in order to change their condition, or perhaps even give to others, like those struggling in the Congo. I think a culture that looks at a family with cable tv, a running vehicle, and consistent food on the table and calls it poor when so many other people in the world are living on less than $1 a day is missing something.

The article ends with this statement: “if poor Americans were to compare their standard of living with what is normal elsewhere in the world, let alone in Congo, they would see they have little cause for discontent. Then again, were Americans not so incurably discontented with their lot, their great country would not be half as dynamic as it is.” I tend to agree that we as Americans do seem to be incurably discontented, but I’m not sure this adds to our dynamism. Rather, I think this trait is what the rest of the world loathes about us. Perhaps if we really did begin to get to know other peoples and places such as the Congo we would realize that we have nothing at all to complain about.

-Brooke