There’s No Time To Wait To Make A Change
Unsinkable Storytelling Author: Caroline Vartanian
Hi everyone my name is Caroline!
I’m originally from the United States and moved to Canada when I was just a little girl.
I love activism, philanthropy and fighting for equality. In 2014 I started something called Project Care. At the time I didn’t know what it would lead too and I didn’t really have a vision in mind. All I known is I just wanted to help people and especially the people at SickKids Hospital. SickKids is an extraordinary place that helps so many people each and every day and instead of sitting at home doing nothing I figured I might as well try to be a part of change. It’s been really fun. I host annual big sales, lemonade stands and I host a big annual Toy Drive. Although it’s been a lot of fun it’s also been quite challenging.
I’ve been all too familiar with the phrases “ this is cute” or “ when you’re older you’ll do something big” or “ aren’t you a little young”.
I hate the fact that I’ve been familiar with these phrases. Why do I have to wait to be older to be a part of something big, why can’t I do it now?
At my school there’s a lot of Clubs. There’s an anime club, knitting club and even a Harry Potter Club. But we didn’t have any sort of Charity that would help pediatric medicine or our local children’s hospital SickKids. I filled out an application and had a committee team ready. I was ready, I was so excited. Then with a blink of an eye I was turned down. You may ask yourself why would a charity Club at a school be turned down? I was asking the same question. All we would do is host weekly meetings after school and host the bake sale once a month like everyone else. All the funds going to SickKids. I was turned down because my school had quote on quote too many charity clubs and maybe I should start something else like a sewing Club.
You think that doing something good would be easy and people would be supportive but that’s not always the case.
I had to fight with my school and even had meetings with the principal, yet, I was still turned down. This is in the beginning of Project Care but I knew that something big was going to come. So I didn’t let that stop me. I hosted meetings outside of our school on our field, technically not a part of the school campus and not a part of our school life so therefore no rules being broken! I hosted meetings every single week and we hosted our own bake sales. And that’s pretty much how project care started today. I’ve raised over $15,000 and donated over 600 toys for SickKids. Even during quarantine I got to make and donate 200 face masks for essential workers. There’s been a lot of hiccups in the way but overall it’s been a really fun roller coaster ride.
Now to answer the question: why start something like this? It seems like of a lot of work? Well, to be honest, I see myself in the mirror every single day, thinking I could do more so why not try? I know how hard it is to feel isolated and not like everybody else. In elementary school I was made fun of a lot because my dad doesn’t live at home. On average I see my dad maybe once or twice a year and I’m really grateful for that. 10 year old boys and girls aren’t that nice and definitely came with a lot of bullying. When you’re isolated and different from everybody else and don’t have anybody to turn to life gets kind of hard. I have a lot of friends and family who rely on SickKids every single day and I know how isolated they feel. If I feel isolated just because I don’t see my dad often, imagine how it feels to be stuck in a hospital room by yourself four months at a time. Children aren’t meant to be scared alone in the hospital but they’re meant to be outside playing not a care in the world. I’ve been to SickKids before many times. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never had to stay there for a long period of time. Last year I got to do the summer student program at SickKids where I got to be a volunteer Child Life Specialist. Firsthand I got to see how isolating and scary it could be. I got to meet and see families who haven’t left their Hospital room for 4 months….. And some people think covid quarantine is “too hard”. I got to see the struggle and the pain that everybody has to go through. Sometimes you think that no one else feels the pain and struggles that you go through. After volunteering at SickKids I saw that I’m not alone and other people go through similar things. My generation is the future and if we don’t help this generation then there won’t be a bright future!
I am really really grateful as well because last year I found more like minded individuals enjoying the Fridays for future Toronto. I got to become a coordinator for Friday’s for Future Toronto and as a coordinator I feel so empowered every single day. I used to feel really hopeless about the climate change movement. Believe it or not I literally get yelled at quite often by grown men and women about my climate change activism. As being a young person/youth that’s not really great on my mental health and I’m sure on anybody else’s. I went to my first climate strike in the beginning of the year in 2019 and it changed my life. If you don’t know what Friday’s for Future is, its organization started by 16 year old Greta thunberg in Sweden. She started skipping school on Fridays to strike for climate and now millions of Youth across the world strike every single year! It feels so cool to be a part of something big and a part of change. Something I’ve been striving for my whole life. I meet weekly with my fellow committee members and we plan lots of events across the city. Last September we hosted a climate check with over 60,000 people! When I tell others I was a part of that group and that most of those people are just like me they don’t believe it at all. Their mouths usually drop because they don’t realize how youth are capable of so much. But for some reason like raising money for SickKids it does not come easy it comes with a lot of ups and downs especially when people point out your age. While having a peaceful protest in downtown Toronto you can hear multiple remarks and people looking just to pick a fight.
Why grown men/women would want to pick a fight with a fifteen-year-old about climate change I don’t know but I would like too.
For example at our November strike people decide to show up with anti climate change signs and make their own chants and try to distract us. But we are bigger than that at Friday’s for Future and we raised above them and made our chants even louder because that’s what we strive to be… be the bigger person!
This year I even got to participate in a couple blacklivesmatter marches. Don’t worry I was social distancing! It was so empowering and eye opening to see my community come together and fight for something simple as equality. It did come with challenges. I thought people my elders would be proud and happy that I was fighting for equality. But to my surprise I’ve had people in my close social circle tell me to my face that they didn’t agree with me and they didn’t believe it. How could someone not believe in equality? How could someone believe in Injustice because of somebody’s skin colour?
That made me quite upset. I cried for a couple days. I couldn’t believe that I knew people that didn’t believe in justice.That just made me want to fight more and harder. I’m a very private person and even my closest friends don’t know a lot about me. I usually don’t share things I’m struggling with because I don’t want to seem like I’m “ looking for attention”. In all honesty I struggle a lot with mental health. I struggle a lot with anxiety and even at one point in my life I was really depressed. I used to go to a different doctor every single week and even the hospital. I felt alone. I didn’t leave my room for a whole month. I’m sharing this now because I know there’s other people struggling with the same thing and we all have to know that we’re not alone.
When you’re constantly shot down because of your age, skin colour, ethnicity, economic status, or sexual orientation that could be really hard and it could be really hard on your mental health. We all have to be there for each other.
I have a lot of big things playing in the future and I know they won’t be easy. Like one day I really want to host my own charity Gala or my own 5K. I want to raise more money for the Child Life Department because that’s what I want to make project care focus more on (raising light about Child Life and Climate Change). Child life department at a hospital brings joy and happiness when you might feel hopeless. Sometimes I feel like I plateaued or stuck. But then I think to myself if you find something that you love and do it everyday; you do that for the rest of your life and eventually the world will change. Things like Unsinkable youth make it easy to connect with others when life doesn’t seem too great. And even though I’ve heard constantly in my life “you’re too young” or “you never going to make a difference” or “what’s the point of this? “You’re not going to make a change”. Well I guess it was all worth it when you see the look on a child’s face when they’re smiling in the hospital after they receive the toy or marching all across downtown Toronto for climate change and actually seeing things happen in our government and our Parliament.
I want everybody to know that you’re never too small or too young to make a difference, every little thing matters. For example, if a million people think that ditching straws won’t make a difference in the world because they’re just one person that’s a million plastic straws, so just remember that no action is too little, and together we can do anything. There is a lot of Injustice in the world but if we all come together we can make change happen.