The Ultimate Gift by Alexandria

The Ultimate Gift by Alexandria - May 2018 Scholarship Essay

I stood glancing at the rickety table in the street. The seller captivated me with intricate sculptures of elephants, and carvings of the Hindu deity, Ganesha. I was enjoying the last day of my volunteer trip in rural India, shopping at the Rajasthan market. As I shopped, a middle-aged woman, with a baby strapped to her and a toddler holding her hand, stood behind me. As she softly glanced at me, I understood that she was asking for help.

I couldn’t give the woman what she wanted. Back in California, it was okay for me to buy a meal to those living on the street, struggling to get by. Helping the homeless in any way was always seen as kind. Unfortunately, in India, I was prohibited from giving any type of direct help to villagers, whether that was money, gifts, or food. The organization I traveled with,WE Charity, focused on empowerment by creating sustainable solutions, and was strongly against giving temporary handouts to community members.
However, in that of summer of 2016, I did help to construct a women’s center in the Rajasthan village, adjacent to the market. The center was built 5 feet from the only school in the area. It would be used to educate women of the village on ways to take care of their home and children. Also, it would double as a small preschool. The women, considered as young as 13, stayed in their mud homes cleaning and cooking while taking care of their children. They focused on surviving with what they had without any smoke ventilation or clean water. The project focused on providing resources for them to use in addition to maintaining good health. My sole responsibilities included actively participating in moving rocks, molding bricks, making cement, and paving over rock foundations with 10 other girls. My trip lasted only two weeks, but my group made 550 bricks, and paved cement over half of a rock-filled foundation. The center was not finished, but that did not stop the many celebrations in the community. It was the start of a new beginning for them, and that was something everyone was excited about.
I was emotionally distraught after meeting the woman from the market, so I discussed what happened with my facilitator. I felt awful walking away from the exact reason that I came to volunteer in India. My kind of help consisted of packages and instant hot meals. My facilitator reminded me that the goal was to help the community in hopes of helping themselves become independent. The project gave me time to understand that a handout wouldn’t have helped that woman to sustain herself. My temporary “gift”, I feared, would send her roaming the street in hopes for the next person to help her. I did not want that. I wanted a better life for her, for her children, and for her community. I felt that the project was the right way to help her. It wouldn’t give her instant relief, but the resources she would need to learn to depend on herself. I never saw her again, but as I traveled home, she and the children I met in the community stayed with me. I couldn’t go home and only provide the same baskets that I grew up giving. I wanted to continue helping others in my own community, keeping in mind I now believed it was inefficient to enable others with temporary help.

I thought what better way to help others than to encourage their own education. For two years, with a student organization at my school, Take Flight, my mission was to mentor 7th-8th grade students in the right direction, not to hold their hand through promotion. I can’t be in the village that I grew to love, but I am trying to use my experience to fuel my desire to help, to be apart of something more valuable.