From Obsession to Awesome

Some people reading this are very much aware of my status as the girl who likes Harry Potter. No, not Ginny, but a fangirl of the series. I have the merchandise to prove it and the many references that spew out of my mouth on a minute to minute basis are a flashing Vegas sign of I-love-Harry-Potter. Due to my beyond borderline obsession, one cannot tell me that this series is merely a story. Maybe that is what it began as, a story about a boy with a great destiny. But sometimes that is all it takes to bring about an ever-improving generation. This story bought about the Harry Potter Alliance.

The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA for short; Harry Potter has already been said a copious amount of times) is an organization that arose in 2005, with an awesome idea that grew into a reality. To quote from their mission statement, “The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a 501c3 nonprofit that takes an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights” (http://thehpalliance.org/what-we-do/). When I found out about this organization a couple of months ago, I was taken aback by the ingenuity of it. Using Harry Potter to fight the Dark Arts in the real world? Heck yes!

Come at me.

I’d been looking for some way I could decrease world suck, and here was something I could do (beside attempting vegetarianism, and being aware of that environmental impact and all. That’s a whole other story). What’s more, I could take my love for the Harry Potter fandom, all the enthusiasm I have for the series, and make it into something bigger. I began oh so evilly planning a way to bring this idea to my school, talking to friends about it. The idea was appealing even to the non-Harry Potter folk.

It really is incredible how what began as a story took on a life of its own. Reading made a comeback, and now we Muggles have taken it upon ourselves to really go out to make the world a better place. And in case you were wondering, Harry Potter has now been stated eleven times in this post. Keep making the world awesome!