The Blackbird Society: Kids, if persistent, can in fact change the world

To The Daily Sun,

Our names are Carol, Sophie, and Lauren, and we are the founders of a group we call The Blackbird Society. We are in sixth grade, and we write to companies all over the country to ask them to stop testing on animals. We email international companies with the email we created for our group.

The original letter we wrote was last year. Sophie and Carol wrote it for their New Hampshire Kid Governor campaign. We wrote this first letter to Maybelline makeup company, and unfortunately, we got a rather unpleasant response.

But that didn’t stop us from keeping on writing. Next we wrote to Procter & Gamble, the company that owns Pampers diapers and other household products. We actually got a response from the Pampers team, saying that they were trying as hard as they could to prevent animal testing unless required by laws.

So far we’ve written 13 letters and gotten two responses. It’s not a lot, but we have meetings every day, as all of us are staff kids, and get to stay at school late. We have a little picnic table we like to sit at after school. Then we plan out all of our research, mailing, and writing. Usually we each pick a letter to write, and then everyone has to approve it before we send it out.

We research vigorously before composing a letter, and we recently learned that if companies sell their products in mainland China, post-market animal testing is required. But, animal testing is not required when products are sold online. We have suggested this alternate route to many companies, even though they may not get as much of a profit from it.

In conclusion, we feel that kids can really do anything to change the world if they want to. They just have to not give up.

Carol, Lauren, and Sophie

The Blackbird Society Co-Leaders