For the third year in a row, I am going on a service trip with Children’s Global Alliance; this time to I’m going to Tanzania. Growing up in Eagle, Colorado, I have had a very unique life at only fourteen years old. I have two older brothers, two awesome parents, and an even more awesome dog named Kayenta. I play football, lacrosse, and competitive karate, and I like to play piano, camp, and mountain bike. Starting my freshman year of high school has been a little scary, especially because both of my brothers are now out of the house, but so far I am doing pretty well. The part that makes my life really unique is that I have been on two service trips with CGA, once to Nicaragua in 2016 and once to Cambodia this past summer.
These trips have been like nothing else I’ve ever experienced; they’ve taught me so much. Since the spring of 2016 before I went to Nicaragua, I had no idea how fortunate I am, how much different life in developing countries is, and what it means to do something solely for the purpose of helping others. I feel that these trips have made me more grateful and more mature about certain things in life. I can remember at least one instance where one of my friends told me that they had a crack in their phone screen, and their parents would not replace it. The friend automatically jumped to the conclusion that they were so unlucky and their parents hated them, and all I could do was tell them how lucky they were that they had a phone and they had parents that were there for them. I also think that these experiences have changed my work ethic and commitment skills greatly, having done a lot of physical labor in Cambodia. Who knew that I would get to live like I have lived before I even get my driver’s license.
I don’t think anything in our local lives really compares to the kind of impact CGA makes. It changes the lives of the people we go to help just as much as it changes our lives, if not more. CGA is not associated with any religious group, meaning we don’t go with the hope of changing people’s faith or building any religious foundations in an area where there are none. The organization’s main purpose is to help people who live in extreme poverty find a better life for themselves. This is why many of the service trips are centered around teaching at under-resourced, under-supported schools.While any help makes at least a little difference, teaching can make the biggest impact, because the best way to break the poverty cycle is through education. People can’t help themselves if they don’t know how or why. And even though we’re just a group of teenagers, we have the ability to teach kids in these countries at least a few things that they may never get to learn anywhere else. Specifically in Tanzania, students can only move on to high school if they know English, because at that point all classes are taught in English instead of Swahili, the language that classes are taught in through to the end of middle school. So, just by being there as native English speakers, we can already make an impact. I am very excited to, once again, be a part of a CGA trip to make a difference in the world.
