My community service I want to tell you about is not your average clean the river type of service project. I want to tell you about a project that I became very passionate for only a few months ago. My service was done for a program called New Global Citizens and in this program I was able to educate my high school on issues that affect the whole world on a daily basis such as world hunger, extreme poverty, etc...
I always hear of the stories of how people knew they wanted to follow something, how they started volunteering and how it has changed their life. To tell you the truth my passion for my service project came from a website I visited that I got from a Girl Scout journey book I had purchased. I never thought I would become as passionate for New Global Citizens as I did this past year. This website I happened to enter into Google didn’t show me pictures of people I had to help and it didn’t ask me to donate money. This website told me that I had the power to create change. The basis of New Global Citizens is basically to empower the youth of the world to help others in need. That’s where I got hooked. Service is not just helping out at a soup kitchen or cleaning a river, its helping the people who need help. I know I raised as much money as I could in the small amount of time I had and I put so much work and time into it as I could. In New Global Citizens, you can create a team which is kind of similar to a club in school. You raise funds for one of over 50 projects that are grassroots projects. Grassroots projects are projects that are created and based out of the community where the problem exists. Basically, New Global Citizens believes that the people who can come up with the best ideas for ending extreme hunger in a small village are the people living in that village and experiencing the hunger themselves. With the help of New Global Citizens I not only was able to raise funds for a program based out of Burma called WEAVE or Women’s Education for Advancement and Empowerment. But I was able to educate the kids in my high school about a problem that only a few months earlier I never even knew existed. I am very lucky to have the opportunity to do the standard volunteer work that everyone knows and can name off the top of their head as I have already mentioned. But what New Global Citizens gave me was the opportunity to help people that I will never meet. I do not know the names of the people who run WEAVE and I have never spoken with them face to face. But I know that I have helped them in more ways than one. I sent them my fundraising funds, yes but I believe that is not all I gave them. The kids in my high school now know what WEAVE is. They may search it on Google or just remember a statistic I mentioned to them but they know.
I believe that my perspective on this has really changed since working with New Global Citizens and learning the things I have learned. One girl that joined the team I started is from Burma and she has worked with WEAVE before. She was so happy when we chose to work with WEAVE and she was valuable resources when learning about what was going on in Burma. When this girl spoke about what she lived in and how WEAVE was helping people it almost made tears come to your eyes. She told me once, “These people need our help. They are the ones in need. And I know that if America was the one in need the people of Burma would all come to our aid in a heartbeat”.
I can almost not believe how much New Global Citizens has changed my life. It may have started out as just another site in a advocacy and service guide. But it turned out to have changed me. And after reading this you decide you don’t like the idea of New Global Citizens and if you don’t believe that kids can really change the world that is perfectly fine. But just take away this, think of Burma, and all the other places that need our help. Think of what my new friend taught me about helping our neighbors. The good that comes from that nobody can deny. So basically, if you see someone talking about a global issue or trying to raise money, don’t just blow them off. What they say may surprise you and what you do with that knowledge might just change the world.