More handpicked essays just for you.
Reflecting on volunteering
Making a positive contribution by volunteering
How has volunteerism impacted my life
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Reflecting on volunteering
Over twelve years ago my family developed a bond with Martina Amoth, a native Kenyan who was traveling in the United States with her husband and young son, Robert. Our two families blended wonderfully, permitting a life-long relationship to flourish. Two years later, in the winter of 2004, Martina, her husband, Robert, and my mom Deb traveled to Kenya to aid the children and families within the community. During the month of December, Martina and Deb worked fervently on projects to aid the community. Such projects included building a well, providing school supplies, desks, health care supplies, and maize to feed over one hundred people for three months. After the conclusion of her adventures in Kenya, Deb informed me of how she made a difference to the young minds and the surrounding village. At the early age of seven, my mind began to develop ideas of how I could change the world just like my heroic mom. Once I reached seventh grade, I decided that I wanted to travel to Kenya as well. After putting years of thought into a possible visit to the slums in and surrounding Kenya that my...
The minutemen and their world: As the title says "their world" this is exactly the basis that Gross take when he wrote the book. Rather than focusing on the war during that time like normal American Revolution stories, Gross focuses on the people as a community and life before, during, and after the war in the community. Gross presents himself as one who lived in the community because he seems to know a lot about the community as he was present in it.
As Kenyan mother once said, “My dreams don’t look exactly like I thought they would when I was a little girl” (nd). Jacqueline Novogratz, a modern philanthropist, understands this better than most. A typical American girl, she found herself in Africa, helping women with no voice in their world. She never planned for this growing up, but her leadership, determination, and new way of looking at the world was in her from the beginning.
In Northern Kenya a small village of Sudanese refugees have made a makeshift village, which has served as their permanent housing for the past twenty years. This village displays the kind of poverty that is predictably featured in Time Magazine on a semi-regular basis: mud walls are adorned by straw roofs, ribs can be easily counted on shirtless bodies, flour is a resource precious enough to be rationed, and a formidable desert can be seen in all directions. What do you see when you look at this village? Do you see a primitive society, struggling to survive in a world that has long made struggling for survival antiquated, do you see the cost of western colonialism, do you see a people deprived of the dignity of humanity, do you just
There are 300,000 children living as Restaveks in Haiti. The children you see below were “Restaveks,” or “slave children” here in Haiti, who now has a better life through the Restavek Freedom Foundation. We love sharing the food God has blessed us with, especially with ministries that help many of these children. We share two containers of food each month with many other ministries like this. We have to raise the fund the cost of shipping and transportation funds for each container, which totals $10,000. We trust God for a miracle each
A well-known program in New Orleans is The Covenant House. It is a well establish program that offer assistance to thousands of youth. Each day, scores of kids walk into Covenant Houses across the Americas for the first time. They get what they need immediately: a shower, a meal, clothes, a warm bed, and medical care if they require it – more than a third do. Then, Covenant House has expectations of the kids. Once they’re safe, clot...
My name is Asha. I am 6 years old. I go to Senator Obama Primary School in Siaya County, Kenya. My village, Nyang’oma Kogelo, is small, and most of us live in huts. At school Ms. Adoyo teaches my friends and I all about this thing called “hope”. She tells us to keep dreaming and “to have hope, because things will get better”. I don’t know what she means by “better”, t...
For my volunteer experience I chose to help assist in a program called the Sonshine Club that’s provided in one of the local city schools Kenwood Heights Elementary School. The Sonshine club has been a program that has been established for approximately seventeen years now in which at this particular school they met on Tuesdays from 3:15-4:15pm. Their message to bring to the children is that “there is a bright light out of all of this” (Use.salvationarmy.org, 2014). In Clark county, Ohio the data shows that there are 27% of children between the ages of 5-17 years old, are in poverty (Use....
Thousands of books and essays about poverty, causes and possible fixes have been written for others to gain an understanding and pocket a little bit of knowledge so this can soon be fixed. There are millions of organizations in today’s world that beg for money, clothes, and food so they can be sent overseas to help a poor child in Uganda or Haiti. Helping nationwide is always a good thing to be a part of; however, there are many things that can be done in each person’s community, which is always a great place to start.
In his address to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson declared freedom of the seas in times of peace and war. Looking back, it seems ridiculous to think that anyone could challenge the right of individuals to navigate the oceans freely. However, fast-forward to the twenty-first century and we can see an analogous debate over the issue of immigration rights, with territorial borders being the main topic of discussion. The system of immigration in the United States is complex and oftentimes restrictive, and while revisions to the system usually include increasing quotas or other solutions to let in certain groups of people who deserve special consideration (such as those whose skills are needed in a particular field), they are still very limited solutions. The obvious question that arises from letting in some people but not others is that of fairness. Is the accident of birth or luck of being in the right place at the right time enough to justify restrictive citizenship to a select few? I would argue not. I intend to argue that a commitment to human rights entails the position that borders ought to be open in order to guarantee other human rights, especially the right to migrate.
My trip to Uganda proved to be an extremely rewarding experience. We spent the first part of the Crossroads program at Hofstra University in Long Island for a two-day orientation, during which we met our group members and shared our interests and experiences. After knowing each other for only 48 hours we embarked upon our "journey". We flew from New York to London, to Entebbe airport, roughly one hour from the capital, Kampala. The next morning we met with officials from PDR (Program for Development and Rehabilitation) who gave us a few guidelines about our project and helped sensitize us to the culture and the history of Uganda. That same day we drove to Luwero (roughly 50 miles from Kampala) to meet our host community and "get settled in". The clergy members with whom we spoke were overwhelmingly friendly, and went out of their way to make us feel welcome. The Bishop of Luwero was kind enough to have a guesthouse ready for us. Having expected that each of us would be staying with a separate family, living in our own house with mattress beds and electricity came as somewhat of a shock. Though I wish I could have had the experience of staying with a Ugandan family, our living arrangements worked out quite well. We were able to do our own cooking, use charcoal stoves, and wash our own laundry by hand.
I spent an early part of my life in a developing country called Bangladesh which was a stark contrast to my life in the United States. Despite living in the capital city of Dhaka, which has a busy urban landscape, what always struck me was the sad state of the people struggling with poverty. There were malnourished children and individuals suffering from diseases on the streets. These memories have stuck with me and inspired me to go into a profession that provides service to people in need. People in my family have a diverse range of profession, but my dentist aunt who has done extensive volunteer work through her profession has always been a great role model for me. Last year, my aunt went on a dental service trip to Ecuador and provided free dental care to people who don’t have access to proper healthcare. These
Over the years it seems as though our country has become more populated and unsafe from the illegal immigrants and smuggled goods, such as drugs and weapons, which make it into the United States. Although there are many illegal immigrants and contraband that are able to make it into the U.S undetected, there are a significant amount of people and contraband that are caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The CBP is a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and was formed in 2003. “It is one of the world’s largest law enforcement organizations and is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S” (CBP). One of the departments of the CBP is border security, which is a team of individuals that work together to protect our country from “illegal immigrants, narcotics smuggling, and illegal importation” (CBP). Border patrol was established in 1924 and has changed dramatically over the decades. The one aspect that has not changed is “the overall mission to detect and prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the U.S” (CBP). The border patrol is responsible for patrolling the 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters. According to CBP, “In 2013 420,789 nationwide illegal aliens were apprehended and 2.9 million pounds of drugs were seized.” As one could tell, there is a significant amount of illegal immigrants and smuggled goods coming into the U.S. However, the number of illegal immigrants that have been seized is lower than it has been in the past, but I still believe that having a strong border security is necessary in continuing to keep immigrants from trying to come into the U.S illegally and transporting illegal goods. “The primary goal of bo...
Within the first year of opening they had helped fifty-two girls see their greatness and help them strive for a better future.Mr. Don J. Brewster was the pastor for a catholic church in Sacramento,California. He went on his first trip to Cambodia in 2005, which was to see the missions his church has been supporting for years. Upon arrival to Svay Pak the only issue only seemed to be poverty, he played with the children, visited the pastors from the missions, and went back on his way home. The next day, after he arrived home, he turned on the news, and the headline story on NBC was “Children For ...
Rhoda Mwale is living in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia and one of the fastest developing cities in South Africa. Rhoda’s house is constructed of mud, and was built by her deceased husband. Although she operates a small vegetable stand in Chainda Market, her income was never high enough to sustain her household. Only one of her five children were able to attend school due to financial constraints. Unfortunately, during the last rainy season, one of the rainiest seasons in Lusaka, Rhoda’s house collapsed. Rhoda was forced to move into her son’s home where three of her grandchildren live. Rhoda said, “I was financially crippled and therefore my children grew up under hard conditions. Before joining FINCA, my family often had only one meal a day and went to bed hungry.”
In the summer of 1994, I had the opportunity to travel to Tanzania on an SSRC Predissertation Grant to begin to establish affiliation, research clearance and possible fieldsites. I have also made contacts at the district level with officials and academics in the area. Though I already speak Kiswahili, the national language of Tanzania, I also have made arrangements to study Maa, the language of the Kisongo Maasai and WaArusha who live in the district in which I will be working. I am looking forward to working in Tanzania not only because of its political stability and unique history as a nation, but also because of the opportunity to generate information about children and education in pastoral communities there, a topic which is still under-researched despite the restructuring of national curriculum in recent years.