Righting Universal Wrongs

I've been thinking about Wrong Things that I can't realistically do much about, and those that I can. Like, the conditions that created the Somali pirates, i.e. the rest of the Western World treating them as a toilet while simultaneously taking all their fish for added insult.*

That's one of those problems that important men and women in suits should be tackling while striding down the Corridors Of Power in V Formations and having Serious Discussions.

Likewise, Japanese whaling. I don't feel that spending millions of dollars on an ultra high tech boat that should have been driven by Batman, only to dash off with it, shine lasers into the eyes of whalers and then get the boat rammed and sunk was really the way to go here, activist dudes. I know, it's easy for me to be critical from my safe, dry and most importantly above sea level armchair, but honestly the tactics used seem full of holes and the only time I've ever protested was when mum took away the the gun to Duck Hunt on the nintendo and made me walk the dog.

So, writing letters to my local MP about the world's weightier issues aside, I feel the thing to do here is operate on a community level. I've been talking with Tamsyn about signing up for her mentor program, where you help out preteen kids who don't have particularly awesome family backgrounds. But I'm looking at what else is available and some inspiration would be cool. Do any of you guys do volunteer programs or get involved with World/Community Bettering Projects? Care to tell me about them? It doesn't matter if you're outside of NZ, we probably have a local equivalent of what you're doing, or else it might inspire me to try something similar.

*Really that sentence could be either way around, though one might assume that they took the fish before treating their ocean as a toilet.