In high school, we would hold monthly letter-writing nights for Amnesty International.

We’d encourage all the students to assemble in the dining hall and serve hot cocoa and doughnuts and help them with the process of writing letters to governments and organizations in order to support Amnesty’s campaigns for human rights. We’d pick certain campaigns that we thought were relevant to the students, and educate them about the issues and encourage them to take action.

For most students, letter-writing nights were great social events where they got to do something good at the same time. For many of us, the letters felt like relatively insignificant demonstrations of solidarity with Amnesty International — important as a marker of support, but relatively ineffective at creating real change.

We were wrong.

A few days ago, I found a great video on my friend Dayna’s blog that shows just how much impact every single one of our actions really had.

The video is part of a project by Amnesty International called Protect the Human, a site designed to “make it really easy to find human rights video, links and images from around the web.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted sixty years ago this month. It’s often easy to forget that there are still people out there in the world (and in our own backyards!) that are being denied the basic rights outlined in the Declaration.

It’s even easier to forget that our participation and action — gathering with friends to drink hot cocoa and write a letter can be a small but integral show of support — is truly powerful and can make a difference.

This video was the reminder I needed to spur me back into action.

What will be yours?