Education is the key

Yesterday I attended a fundraiser for Building Tomorrow. Building Tomorrow is "an international social-profit organization encouraging philanthropy among young people by raising awareness and funds to build and support educational infrastructure projects for underserved children in sub-Saharan Africa." In short, they work with organizations in the US (mostly high school and college students) to raise money that will go to building schools in Uganda. During the summer of 2007 I took a 2 week humanitarian trip to Uganda and that's when I officially realized the power education has on youth all over the world. During the next school year, I helped Butler's chapter of Ambassadors for Children raising about $40,000 to build a school in Uganda. To date, this school has been built and opened it's doors to the children in the surrounding community. The kids at this school now have a chance to be something. They will be the next leaders of their country and some will choose to have a voice when it comes to the education of the youth of Uganda.

That being said, I kind of feel bad for helping change so many lives in Uganda, but not being able to do that here in the states. I am completely torn between the joy of seeing the pictures of the new school and it's students and the anger I feel for not being able to make that same impact here in my own country. I know why I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be able to touch the lives of young people. I STILL want to that, I just don't want to teach music. I want to get my foot in the door at IPS and smack some people around. There is NO reason for the Indianapolis Public School system to be so bad. That's why I wanted to be a VISTA for Starfish so much. It didn't matter that all I was doing was event planning, I knew that I'd be a apart of an organization that was helping kids graduate and do something with their lives.

So, 3 months and 1 week left and I'm wondering where I'll be on December 6th. I want to do something that will help HERE... I want to help change things. Yesterday really empowered me to find a way to do that. I'm not sure what that may be, but I'm bond and determined to do SOMETHING.