Sean Carasso founded Falling Whistles to bring attention to child soldiers in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These innocents have been forced to serve in the North Kivu province. If the children were too small to hold a gun in Africa's longest war, the rebel army made them stand at the front lines as human shields armed only with a whistle. In an interview with Intent, Carasso told of his encounter with this level of cruelty:

I'd heard that the biggest war in the world is in Congo. I really didn't know any details, and knew that if that was the case -- if the biggest war in the world is happening and I didn't know anything about it, that was a problem in and of itself. I needed to go learn. So the idea was to go in for a five-day exploratory trip to start learning, asking questions, get as good of an understanding as I could in a few days and make some contacts so I could stay in touch. And at the end of those five days, we ended up discovering this illegal prison for kids. It was basically a military prison .. That day, the "Falling Whistles day," was in a moment of total and complete vulnerability. One of those moments when everything stops and it's like, "OK, this we have to do something about." I haven't really gotten to a place to where I can explain it. My ambitions, my desires, my dreams -- all went away.

Sean took this trip to the Congo after visiting South Africa with his friend Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes, who was there to provide footwear for children in need. Sean exposed the military prison to the U.N. and it was subsequently shut down. Sean blogged about the event, forwarding it to family and friends and they in turn forwarded it as well. Several generations of forwarding later, tens of thousands of people had read the post and a movement was soon born.

When he returned home, Sean's friend Marcus, a street artist, gave him a whistle as a symbolic gesture to keep the story alive. "So we started selling whistles and generating funds to eventually send to our friends in Congo who are doing really great work, locals, whose goal is to create whistleblowers out of their generation as well in Congo."

You can purchase a whistle necklace to help child soldiers in the Congo here. And learn more about the cause here.

[Image: Odi.org]