The Benefits of Helping Others by Sebastian

The Benefits of Helping Others by Sebastian - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

I live in Banks, Oregon, so my community is small and fairly tight-knit. As such, I have a very close bond with many of my peers, and I have the ability to directly see the kinds of opportunities that volunteer work can give to some people. I'm a member of the National Honor Society, so I have a network of people willing to help work – these individuals are key to the successful assistance of those who might not be as fortunate as I am. Our Society performs all sorts of volunteer duties for the community, whether that be through fundraising, canned food drives, or campus cleanups.
The National Honor Society is an excellent team for getting volunteer work done, and it's absolutely inspiring to see the best of the best in our school come together to assist the disenfranchised. One particular initiative we have is the Junior Girls STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) club. This club runs twice a week and introduces the girls to various concepts in Chemistry, Physics, and especially Computer Science. The amazing thing about this is that these girls are absolutely capable of going ahead into highschool, college, and beyond and becoming the next great set of biologists, chemists, and astrophysicists of tomorrow -- that is truly inspiring to me. Just being able to provide an environment where these future programmers and scientists can grow is an incredibly fulfilling and empowering experience for me, especially knowing that they'll be able to learn in a more structured environment than I was able to; I'm a self-taught computer programmer.
These girls are going to be empowered by their experience and ready to take on a new century of scientific progress and innovation. Through their experiences, their capabilities in the hard-science fields will grow, and they will be able to express themselves through those skills. If that isn't absolutely inspiring, I don't know what is.