World Beginnings

  One of my favorite activities in the school year was Week Without Walls, WWW. This was a time for students to learn and experience beyond the classroom. Teachers were in charge of planning the trip and there was a learning focus, to most of them. One that will stay with me forever, not my trip, was building bathrooms in Bali. We tend to think of Bali as an exotic vacation but there is extreme poverty off of the glitzy tourist paths and the students came back changed forever. It is important to point out that these students are extremely privileged, living in a rarified world of drivers, maids, cooks and gardeners. They’ve never cleaned anything in their lives.  Unsurprising, to those who know me, I always focussed on local animal shelters. My last year in Beirut our project was to build cat shelters for a woman who was feeding and caring for about thirty cats in a vacant lot across from her house. Students raised money through bake sales to buy all of the supplies, Then alon...

Years ago, my first volunteer job was at a telephone crisis center in Jackson, Mississippi. During Christmas, the director hosted a party for the volunteers and quietly mingled, asking each of us if we believed in Santa Claus. Later that evening, he addressed the group and reflected on his question. He explained that those who believed in Santa were the ones who still had hope. I often think back on his words. Around the same time, I worked for the Mississippi branch of the American Medical Association (AMA). One year, a group of us decided to adopt a family from the Salvation Army Christmas Tree, and we brought gifts to a young single mother and her toddler. The next year, the office wanted to do something bigger. I volunteered to visit the family the Salvation Army matched us with. After meeting a couple of families who didn’t move us, we requested another. We never called ahead—most people didn’t have phones anyway—because we wanted to see the “real family.” What happened next ch...