About two to three U.S. soldiers are killed daily in Iraq, according to icasualties.org’s tally from 2005. Perhaps a more critical number is that about 50 Iraqi civilians die each day, according to iraqbodycount.org. I now feel the need to put that in context with a different death count — one receiving much less attention in America today. In the time it takes you to read this sentence, one child will die from poverty-related causes. That’s about 600 during your Thanksgiving meal last week. All in all, according to globalissues.org, roughly 30,000 children die each day from poverty. Which seems more important?

By no means am I justifying any military action that is occurring — that is up to other facts. What I am trying to show is that as critical as the war in Iraq is to our nation, there are issues in this world that are much more tragic and should demand our attention and compassion.

Perhaps one of the reasons we have wars to fight is that enough people in this world are not concerned about the rest of it. In 2005, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that more than one trillion dollars was spent militarily worldwide. Only about 87 billion was spent on foreign aid. That’s a lot of money, but 12 times more was spent in the business of killing rather than saving lives.

So what does this all have to do with you, a student at NIU, living in arguably the most powerful and wealthiest nation ever on earth? It means we have some serious choices to make about the legacies we are going to leave and the actions we are willing to take in this world. Granted, we can’t all travel overseas and work with foreign aid corporations. Nor can we all afford to send huge chunks of money overseas. But we can easily make a difference in a person’s life, even if we are “poor” college students.

I once met a man named John, who lives on the streets in San Antonio. Suffering an eye injury while in the military, he was no longer able to continue his career as a truck driver, and with his wife’s death years ago, he lost nearly all income. I walked by him, intending to go into McDonald’s and buy myself a late-night hamburger. With one glance, I knew he needed that hamburger a lot more than me, so I invited him to come inside with me where I bought him a meal and talked to him about his life. I, a college student, made a difference, no matter how small, in this man’s life.

You see, not all poverty and need is overseas. There is disparity in our own country; our own neighborhoods. There are dark voids where the light of love needs to shine through. While the average person can’t do everything for an individual, they can do something, here or overseas. World Vision and countless other relief organizations give average U.S. citizens an opportunity to impact lives worldwide through many programs, such as a $30-per-month sponsoring of a child to pay for education, medicine, food and other necessities. This is money often spent on superfluous clothing and entertainment by many of us.

Don’t forget about situations like Iraq and the terrible things occurring there. But don’t let that situation drown out others that are much darker and more devoid of hope.

One can sit inactive and complain about a war, or, through love and compassion, one can become involved in making this world better for those who see little hope.