This summer, I started a small garden in my backyard. After building a raised bed and planting small seedlings, I anxiously (and impatiently) waited to see signs of growth. I planted red bell peppers, summer squash, zucchini, eggplant, and green beans. Every afternoon, I watered and weeded the bed until one day in July, I began to see some new developments. A small bell pepper was beginning to form on one of the plants! Gardening
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The SNAP Challenge is a weeklong experiment to get a glimpse of what life can be like for low-income Americans living on food stamps. The average daily food stamp benefit is only $4 per person per day. I took on this challenge for a “Justice and Civil Society” course in college to better understand the difficulties and unfairness of our nation’s lack of food security. My limit for a week’s worth of meals was
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Imagine mostly inaccessible water, tainted with toxic chemicals. Then imagine being forced to travel long distances to drink that harmful water, because it is your only choice for survival. In the United States and other developed countries, access to clean water is something we take for granted. But in many parts of the world, such basic necessities are not so easy to obtain. According to Indian governmental surveys, 54% of homes in rural India do
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98 teddy bears – looking back, that’s what marks the beginning of my longtime commitment to volunteering. As a child (and with the help of an obliging mother), I volunteered several hours of my time to collect donations of teddy bears to be sent to a local children’s hospital. 98 bears and 15 years later, I can say that volunteering has been one of the longest “constants” in my life. However, my thoughts on the
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The U.N. Volunteers program defines volunteerism as an action that an individual willingly undertakes, that is not financially compensated, and that generally contributes to the common good. The act or employ of volunteers essentially serves to elevate the wellbeing of individuals, communities, and the larger society; consequently, volunteerism values and promotes solidarity, reciprocity, trust, as well as feelings of belonging and empowerment. In the 21st century, general trends in international volunteerism fall into three categories:
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