Why?

The first and basic question that would be posed would be: why make this blog?

This started off due to a campaign in Facebook.

This was the message being passed around -

"Change your profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday (6 Dec 2010), there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is a campaign to stop abuse against children."

Friends of mine really started to change their profile pictures into classic old cartoon shows, and within the first 24 hours of the start of this campaign, it had been a viral success. A significant amount of my friends started to have Eeyore, Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Powerpuff Girls and Pokemon as their display picture. It seemed for that moment, yes, this campaign is a success.

Then, things started to piss me off. I'd see people asking "What's with the new picture?" and the nonchalant reply would be "Oh, this is to help with 'violence against children'!" when actually, these people don't really give a damn. All they care about is sharing what were their favourite childhood cartoon show. They don't really care about helping the abused children, only a handful would be genuine about that.

I made a status, directed to these people: You can change your DP to cartoon characters for all I care, but don't do that using 'helping abused kids' as a reason because that's f**ked up. It does NOTHING to help them, abuse STILL happens and it certainly doesn't spread the message nor enlighten anyone. Instead of sitting behind the computer, you could do a lot more if you get out and do actual things (if saving children from violence even matters to you).

And from there, a debate was risen between my debate coach and team mate and me.

After a much a much heated discussion, I agreed to what they were saying; it is better than nothing, at least the message is spread. For the case of the ignorant people, I'd ignore them, and instead of - as I quote my coach - "wasting righteous indignation on these people, use it for a more positive action," she told me to do something instead of being angry.

This is where this blog comes in.

People change their profile pictures into cartoons, and they stop at that. How many bothers to actually read up on this worldwide situation happening?

As I quote from this site,

Child abuse is defined as stoppage of child abandonment, neglect, rape, acts of lasciviousness, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography, cyber abuse, maltreatment, child labour, illegal recruitment, child trafficking and arm conflict.

What is the first step in helping to stop child abuse? What is a good follow up of this campaign?

The answer is this: read.

Hence, this blog will provide you with a list of sites you can read from to learn more about child abuse.

What's going to happen after reading them all?

I don't know either. That is up to you, on how you wish to continue helping. But I'm just doing my part here to provide you with the links.

Thank you for taking the time :)