The education system has played a significant role in my life. My passion for 25inchange started when I was a freshman in high school. I took an opportunity to travel to Honduras. This trip was life changing for me. From my experiences on the trip, I found my inner passion to create community and to help provide shelter, water, food, and health care. Upon returning to my “normal” life in public high school, it was hard for me to readjust and justify why I was born to a “rich” family in the US and not in the slums of a 3rd world country. My strong pull for justice changed the next 10 years of my life.
After high school, I felt that maybe a higher education would help me understand and resolve the inequality I had witnessed. I attended college at DU to study International Politics, studied abroad and focused on the economic policies of the EU and then topped it off with a MA in Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration. My point in mentioning all this is that within all the classrooms and lectures; I found no answers. Education, while essential to learning the facts, did not provide me with an answer to the problems.
While some theories, politicians, and policies worked better than others – there were no tangible solutions in the works I read. The truth of the matter was that no one person, country or politician knows how to even start to address chronic hunger, obesity, and shelter. It sounds cheesy, but I honestly believe that the answer is the community. God’s commandment to love your neighborhood is truly the only solution. The bottom line is that we have to take care of each other. Each one of us must do our part and raise the bar for the next person. In my opinion, we were never meant to live this life alone; each one of us needs each other. Being a part of 25inchange has made this clearer to me than ever before. To do my part in this change I know that if I make good decisions for myself, inform others with the facts I have learned, and do my best to help others – I can sleep at night.