After seeing a Holocaust exhibit, Arielle Wisotsky, a high school student, was deeply moved and refused to sit back while people today are becoming victims of genocides. Making a commitment to helping those in need, Arielle founded www.helpdarfurnow.org, and has raised more than $100,000 for victims in Darfur. It's up to young people to help the world, and she is the epitome of a humanitarian. Read our interview with Arielle!

How did you come up with the idea of helpdarfurnow.org?
In the spring of 2005, I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. As we were leaving, they had a poster and some informational flyers about the genocide in Darfur. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor and I couldn’t believe that something so terrible had been going on for over 2 years, and I had never heard of it. I knew I wanted to do something to help, so when I came home, I spoke to 2 of my friends, David and Eric Messinger, and we decided to create an organization. Help Darfur Now seeks to raise awareness of and funds for the victims of the genocide in Darfur.

A lot of young people out there want to help, but don't know how they can really make a difference. How were you able jumpstart this organization?
It takes a lot of time and effort to jumpstart an organization. The best advice I have is to start small. When we began, we only hoped to raise about $1,000, through fundraising letters to family and friends. We attended a small rally in Morristown, NJ of only about 50 people and managed to get a mention in a local newspaper that was covering the rally. From there, we continued to get the word out through other small, grassroots-type events and as we received more press coverage, more people learned about the organization and wanted to help. Six months later, we had raised over $75,000 and were speaking in Washington, D.C. in front of a crowd of thousands.

What do you hope to achieve?
Once we saw that the organization was taking off, we announced a fundraising goal of $100,000; we managed to surpass that late in the summer, and have now set a new goal of $200,000. The money we raise is sent to organizations working in Darfur or in the refugee camps in Chad, like Doctors Without Borders, and is used to purchase food, shelter, and medical supplies for the refugees. We also hope to increase public awareness of the genocide in Darfur. I still have people coming up to me when I’m wearing one of our t-shirts (they say ‘Darfur’ on the front), and they’ll ask me, “What’s a Darfur?” However, these same people will have no trouble naming all of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s children (first and middle names) or describing the tragic details of Britney Spears’ failed marriage. Almost half a million people in Darfur have died, and it seems that nobody even knows about it. When more and more people become aware and vocal about it, it puts pressure on Representatives, Senators, and other influential people to actually DO something about it. We hope that by spreading awareness, more governmental action will be taken, which is necessary in order to stop this genocide.

How do you balance maintaining this organization with school?
Balancing the organization with school is not easy. I am not great at time-management, and am a huge procrastinator. I have to tell myself that I can’t start my Darfur work until my homework is finished. Also, if I have to miss some classes to speak somewhere, I tell my teachers ahead of time and get all of the work I’m missing from them. I still haven’t mastered this skill, but I’m working on it!

What do you hope for the youth of your generation to understand?
I think that the youth of our generation need to understand that just because we’re young, it doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. Our elders view us as this apathetic, lazy, self-consumed group of people, who don’t care about anything, but it’s not true, and we need to show them that. If there’s an issue out there that concerns you, speak up. Chances are, you’re not the only one who feels that way and if you’re determined enough, you CAN change things.

What do you think about your generation?
Prior to forming Help Darfur Now, I, too, believed that most of my generation just didn’t care; I’ll admit that initially, I felt that when people learned about Darfur, they’d feel bad about it but wouldn’t bother taking any action. While this is true of some people out there, the positive response to our group has been overwhelming. Help Darfur Now would not be what it is today without the many other students in our organization who have put in a great deal of time and hard work to make a difference. We DO care and we’re going to do something about it.

Please support Arielle's cause with donations through her website.

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