A Home, A Heart, A Hand
the problem:
The main goal of the project I am a part of is educating Tanzanians about HIV/AIDS and prevention, giving street kids an education to avoid violence and promote education as a form of building ones future, to build an orphanage and give young children a home, and to pay it forward in a village community.
vital stats:
people impacted:
2,000people involved:
60why it's important:
This project is important to me because I feel that I am a global citizen, and therefore as a human being, I have a duty to help others in any way I can. Poverty, health issues, and a lack of education go hand in hand; if I have the chance of putting a stop on that cycle for even just one village, why wouldn't I try my hardest at it? It is my passion.
the plan of action:
I took Swahili at my university for 2 years and am now rather fluent. After learning the language, I participated in 10 weeks of training to prepare for my trip to Tanzania. The training required a 10-week intensive training on HIV/AIDS education and prevention methods, teaching skills, survivor skills for living in Africa, mock lessons in a classroom setting for teaching children about HIV/AIDS in Swahili, and many other subjects. In Tanzania, our fully student-based program took 30 students at a time to our site where we built our own mud huts and lived on a site in a remote village and built an orphanage, created safe water systems, and taught children ages 4 to 18 on HIV/AIDS prevention at 3 different schools. We also traveled to Arusha, a town thirty minutes away from our village in order to teach street children English. This was in hopes of promoting education as a way of giving them hopes for the future. It is true that education leads to a career. We also fed the students each teaching night and partnered up on a one-on-one basis for mentoring. Not only did this impact street kids, children at many orphanages, village community members, our own volunteers, and students in our classrooms, but it left a mark on the UCLA campus of what Bruins are capable of. Students can accomplish so much by just coming together and having passion to create change.
how you can get involved:
Others can make a difference by joining an organization such as ours, OneHeartSource, and donating or volunteering. If volunteering is an issue or money is not the route one would like to take, one may even create a club at one's school and run food and clothing drives, put on events with information on HIV/AIDS awareness, and endless other options. It is easy to make a difference, the hardest part is simply making the commitment to one's passion.
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