"We got food" by Caleb

"We got food" by Caleb - January 2024 Scholarship Essay

The elderly woman opened the rusty door of her dilapidated trailer to find two strangers standing on her rickety porch.

“What do you want?” she said suspiciously.

“We have some meals for you and your family,” Dad said, disarming her with his kindness and smile. “How many do you need?”

“Four,” she responded.

“You got it,” he exclaimed.

Dad and I grabbed four Styrofoam boxes filled with Thanksgiving meals from our car and hurried up the steps to hand them to her. As she shut the door, we heard a heart-breaking comment that illustrated the importance of our deliveries.

“We got food,” she yelled to her grandchildren.

Inside our car, Dad looked at me with tears running down his cheeks.

“That,” he said solemnly, “is why we do this.”

That day in general and that delivery in particular provided me with an eye-opening experience that inspired me to make a positive impact in my school and community through volunteerism, which I have learned blesses the participants as much as it blesses the recipients. It also illustrates my biggest contribution to my community, which is fighting hunger.

My father and I volunteer together at the annual Boone Memorial Health Thanksgiving Dinner Giveaway, where we deliver dinners to low socioeconomic families. Our first year we delivered 25 meals. Our second year we delivered 50 meals. Our third year we delivered 100 meals. Our goal for this year is to deliver 200 meals. My father and I also volunteer at the annual United Way Backpack Buddies Packing Day, where we fill boxes of food that are mailed to low socioeconomic students in the summer. Almost 500 households and 900 students — or approximately 27 percent of the district’s total enrollment — benefited from the program in 2023. My father and I also volunteered at the quarterly Mountaineer Food Bank Mobile Food Pantry, where we distributed boxes of food to community members. Unfortunately, the program ended after two years because there was not enough funding to continue it. However, my father is working with the county commission and other organizations to find funds and sponsors so we can revive the program, which costs between $6,000 and $7,000 but helps between 200 and 250 households each time.

I also participate in the Scott High School Partners Club, which pairs general education students with special education students who have severe and profound disabilities. We spend lunch with our partners to promote inclusion in our school. I love my time with my partner, whose happiness is contagious. Some of my favorite memories from high school include my partner, who has become one of my best buddies. We always hug or high-five when we see each other in the hallways or at sporting events, and we always talk for a few minutes before taking a photo together. My friendship with my partner is one reason I will work toward a special education certification in college. I also participate in Hawks Huddle, a Scott High School initiative in which student-athletes take turns visiting Madison Elementary School. We greet the students as they exit their buses, giving them fist bumps and high fives to start their day. Then, we go to their classrooms, where we read to them, interact with them, and sign autographs for them. As a future educator, I love this program because it gives me an opportunity to gain real-world experience by teaching and mentoring youth. It also provides me with a platform to be a positive role model and emphasize the benefits of participating in the performing arts, such as band, chorus, and theater.

I will continue participating in service opportunities at Marshall University because servant leadership is a way of life for my family. My parents model it for me daily. My father is a director and principal for our county’s school system. My mother is a nurse practitioner for our community’s rural health clinic. They treat their students and patients like family, and they work tirelessly to meet their students’ and patients’ needs. I want to emulate their example and make the world around me a better place.

I will make my biggest contribution to my community after I graduate from college. I plan to follow in my father’s footsteps by becoming a teacher and principal in my hometown, where the rise of the opioid epidemic and decline of the coal industry simultaneously ravaged our communities and destroyed our economy for the greater part of the past decade. Although our county and its citizens are still feeling the adverse effects of those events, we are finally recovering and rebuilding. I want to play a pivotal part in that critical process, which will depend heavily on education. I want to help our county develop and maintain a skilled workforce. I want to educate and encourage our youth. I want to help them become our future doctors, plumbers, lawyers, electricians, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, cosmetologists, pilots, cooks, architects, nurses, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, dentists, carpenters, and teachers or any other professions they choose. I want to help them achieve their goals and reach their potential. I want to be a merchant of hope for my students and a catalyst for change for my community.