If you would’ve told me two years ago I would have become obsessed with archery, side ponytails, and men with the first name of Peeta, I would have laughed at you. But alas, I received the Hunger Games trilogy two Christmases ago and have since been a fan of Katniss Everdeen.

Tried as I may, I couldn’t help the confusion over why one of my bestest friends would buy me teen literature. But as the story goes, I was sucked into life in District 12 while holding up a three-finger salute to the mocking jay. I’ve written about the series and it’s cultural implications before, but with Catching Fire newly released, I’m wildly disconcerted and simultaneously intrigued with the similarities to our world today.

Yesterday I spoke to students for National Human Rights Day to discuss life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and paralleled the world of Panem to our world today.

At a private school perched on top of a crest in the Los Angeles hills with boarding school etiquette and plaid uniforms to match, I shared that today—around the globe—people are dying of AIDS, pestilence, hunger, thirst, malaria, and preventable diseases. Today, 30 million slaves generate 32 billion dollars of revenue a year. Today, over 2,800 people will be sucked into slavery by trickery, coercion, or birth. Today, girls as young as 11 years old will become victims of trafficking in the United States. Today, around the globe men, women, teens, and children will work in third world countries for as little as $8 dollars a day.

But for teens in the Western world, this is a place as far away as Panem.

• Today the average American teen will listen to 60-130 songs.
• Today the average American teen will be on Facebook for over 65 minutes.
• Today the average American male teen will download some form of pornography which exploits the human body.
• Today the average teen in American—or as I like to call us, The Capital—will consume 3-5 meals of gluttonous proportions.
• Today 74% of average American female teens are on a diet.

As I stared out in to the sea of faces, I wasn’t hopeless, but hopeful. Yes, our world is facing a horrible reality. But our reality is not our destiny. It never is.

The lure of Katniss Everdeen is that she could be you, she could be me. At the core of us is a desire to do what is right, good, true, and just. The sacrifice is big. The risks are daunting. But the payoff? The payoff is worth it.

There is a world out that that is dying for someone to hold up a three-finger salute and lead them to hope, to chance, to life. We have a chance to stand before the world and do what called to do: change the world.

Here’s to side braids, freedom, and archery. But better yet, here’s to a generation of Katiss’, Peetas, and Primms who know that their valiant acts could very well change history.

May the odds be ever in your favor…