Awareness-->Action

I'm wondering when one leads to another.It seems I have considered myself aware of many global issues for some time.
I think the magnitude of the poverty our world faces can be paralyzing.
How can I do any good?  The problems are SO big.  They are so widespread.  Every country on every continent has people that are in need. Some in grave, life-threatening need for food, medicine, shelter.
I'm re-reading Kisses from Katie, which quite frankly may be my next book study group and I'm re-reading 7 while we go through this fasting experiment.  I can literally FEEL my world rocking.
I was asking myself these questions yesterday.  How does awareness move towards action?  What can I, a mother of 4, do to help anyone?  I can't single-handedly feed all the starving people in this world. 
Here is an excerpt from Kisses from Katie: "Every day I have spent in Uganda has been beautifully overwhelming; everywhere I have looked, raw, filthy, human need and brokenness have been on display, begging for someone to meet them, fix them.  And even though I realize I cannot always mend or meet, I can enter in.  I can enter into someone's pain and sit with them and know.  This is Jesus. Not that He apologizes for the hard and the hurt, but that He enter in, He comes with us to the hard places.  And so I continue to enter."
What I quickly realized is that I don't have to be in Uganda  or in my case where I truly want to be, Haiti, to do this.  I can do this here.  Right now.  With my child, my husband, my friend, my neighbor. 
And really, aren't we all raw, filthy, broken.  We just hide it better in our society.  We close the doors on our hearts, our homes and hide the brokenness.  We mask it with possessions and trips, food and jobs.  We're all broken.  We all just want someone to enter into that pain with us.  Just for a moment.  To feel it with us.  My pain will not be your pain.  My tears will come from some place very different from yours, but it's all there for each of us, because we're sinful.  We fail.  We mess things up.  It's what we do.  I can't change that about myself.  I will always mess up.  And the miracle is that God knows that and yet He still has given me a huge responsibility to my children, my husband, my friends and family, my world. 
What was He thinking???  I don't know and probably never will, but I'm ok with that for now.