The Importance Of Traveling To Puerto Pe単asco, Mexico

As a wide-eyed seventh grader, thirty of my peers and I gathered together and went to Akron, Ohio, to help the immigrants and people who were living in poverty. We rebuilt fences and helped families with odd-jobs they needed done. This experience was eye opening to see that people living only thirty minutes away were struggling to keep food on their plates and that I, doing so

The assignment that really inspired me was writing about the video, From Homeless to Howard, where we learned about peoples perception, and stereotypes. I would like to say that watching the video with James Ward was amazing, he’s 19 and his perception of the world is a lot different from those who had never been homeless or had to carry adult duties at such a young age. During the video, I tried to imagine what my life would have been like if I were homeless and so young. I know that my perception of the world would be a lot different. The things that I complain about now, wouldn’t be my biggest issue. Surviving while homeless would be my concern.

Many people tend to take things for granted. We overlook the things that some people wished they had so they can live without struggle. It usually just comes so easily for us and we don’t realize how hard other people’s lives are. Jeannette Walls knows firsthand what it’s like to be without these modern luxuries. In her memoir, “The Glass Castle” she writes about how she sometimes grew up without things like a place to live, clothes to wear, food on the table, electricity to power the house and keep her warm. In her upbringing, her parents never really supplied her with the things she needs or took very good care of her so she learned how to survive with the little she got. She learns throughout her life that she should never take anything for granted and to appreciate the good things in life because she doesn’t get most of the essentials that other people have normally. Throughout the story she always knew to be grateful and value every little thing she got because she didn’t get much.

The following week, we spent most of our time in the poorest parts of the city. There we went door-to-door sharing the love of God and had Vacation Bible Schools for the kids. This is when I realized how blessed I truly was. For the first time, I got to see the privations and penury environment that the citizens of Third World countries had to endure. The unpaved streets were covered in trash. Many houses, made of tin sheets, had collapsed on themselves. The people had to share wells, where they drew their parasitic water. Men, women, and children sat on the sides of the roads begging for money, because they were sick, hungry, and needed money for food and proper medication. The site of these atrocious states of living broke my heart, and showed me how blessed I really was for not having to face these problems.

Philip shares with me his personal experiences working with the individuals who found themselves living on the streets during the years of 1986-1996. He explains why eventually he dealt solely with those individuals who would not go in to the missions and shelters or even accept food from the mobile soup wagons. Philip relives the moment that he first realized that houseless people were not in their current situation because of a life misled or because they were lazy or criminal, as may be the common

Volunteering at the St. Luke’s showed me that poverty comes in all forms. In the four hours I volunteered at St. Luke’s, we had all kinds of people come in for a meal. Hispanic, Black, White, Asian, men, women, old, and young can all experience poverty. The experience at St. Luke’s also showed me how, despite the resurgence of some parts of Buffalo, there are still many people experiencing difficult times, and they could use a little help from others in the community. () Helping out those people that need it is definitely a good way to build

During the summer after I turned thirteen, I went on a vacation that changed my entire perspective on life. “Americans are so spoiled.” I remember hearing my mother proclaim this numerous times growing up. I would shake my head or roll my eyes every time, since I never quite understood what it meant. Of course, I had nothing to compare it to. I grew up in the suburbs in a middle class family. I never wanted for anything. I heard the stories of my mother and her siblings growing up; they lived in filth, they occasionally skipped meals, all seven kids slept huddled together on concrete floors. I heard those stories as if she was saying, “…I walked a mile to school, uphill both ways…” I never could have imagined the reality of what the stories truly meant until I visited my birthplace, the Philippines, for the first time.

Seeing a kid who will hold a gun before they hold their first book. Seeing a teenager my age injecting himself with heroin instead of injecting himself with knowledge. Seeing an elderly person who, when looking back at their life, will remember nothing but memories of misery. These things can't be read in a book or seen on a television. The truth is, you will never understand what people are truly going through until the day you look at them in the eyes. With members of my team, I worked tirelessly to build a home for a man named Serafin who no longer had a roof to live under in the slum. It was both the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and the most rewarding. Serafin now had a home where he and his family could live in, and I had a new set of eyes to look at the world through. Later that day, I experienced what life was on the other side of the spectrum. Ironically enough, hours after being in Ciudad Bolivar, I found myself at a family wedding in one of Colombia's most luxurious country clubs. Most people were wearing articles of clothing and accessories that individually were worth more than everything a person in Ciudad Bolivar would own in their

I was issued to travel to the monstrous Guadalupe Mountains in Salt Flat, Texas. To give you a sense of where it is, it’s in West Texas near El Paso, and extends into New Mexico. The address is 400 Pine Canyon Salt Flat, TX 79847. Source: Geology of National Parks by Harris, Ester Tuttle, and Sherwood D. Tuttle. Because of the intense thunderstorms/high winds during the summer and occasional snow during the winter, I chose October. There’s calmer weather, cooler temperatures (between 50’s and 70’s), and vibrant fall colors. Source: Geology of National Parks by Harris, Ester Tuttle, and Sherwood D. Tuttle. After reading up on some of the history, the Guadalupe Mountains got it’s name from the ranchers that homesteaded in the Guadalupe

Based on the article “Changing the Face of Poverty” the issue that Diana George is responding to is poverty and its representation in the world. George first discusses how the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity tries to eliminate poverty by constructing houses for Americans who are suffering because of poverty. However, she states that the images which the nonprofit organization uses are pictures that try to “evoke the desire to give or to act, so that the benefactors don’t turn away” (George 240). These pictures may not completely depict all people who are suffering from poverty.

On one sunny day, I was helping my mom doing chores when she pulled me over to talk to me about something important. I was confused why my mom would want to me about something important, but I listened to what she said and followed her. What she told me was what her life was like back in Vietnam. She did not have much of an education. Instead, she stayed home with her mom to sell Vietnamese yogurt every day for a living. Since I was born in America, I never thought of life was like for others in developing countries like Vietnam. Hearing from my mom's experience, it stuck with me. I learned the importance of being grateful for what I have since they are a lot of people who do not have what we have in America and it made me want to help those who are in need. I was also inspired to do whatever I

Growing up in one of the most neglected zip codes of Miami, I have faced challenging obstacles all my life. These challenges were not only limited to financial worries, they included peer issues as well as moral ones. Growing up in a neighborhood where police lights and drug dealing were the norm taught me valuable life lessons that most people could never understand. I believe this upbringing has molded me into the person I am today, a person who sees hardships as a way to grow and excel, a person who sees life through a producer mindset, rather than a consumer one.

After landing in Mexico and meeting up with the people I would be working with during a three-day mission trip, we were crammed into a bus and spent the next two hours getting to know each other. We were there to build homes for a multitude of families in the town of Xochimilco, Mexico. When we arrived late in the afternoon, we were led to an empty school where we would spend our nights. Sleeping on the floor next to school lockers with bugs buzzing in my ears in a country I did not know well was an interesting experience to say the least—but that was just the beginning. At dawn, the real work began and so did a change in my thinking that had a dramatic effect on my perspectives about life.

Immediately I was introduced to an unimaginable degree of poverty. Hungry families were living in small rundown shacks. Soon after sunrise construction began- building a volunteer bunkhouse and renovating families homes. With growing mold, broken utilities, and overall structural deterioration, homes were unsafe living conditions for any human being, let alone a family.

For Esperanza, the House on Mango Street is “not the house we thought we’d get,” (Cisneros 3). It is “the house [she] is ashamed of” (Cisneros 106); she desperately yearns to live in a big house with “real stairs… a basement and at least three washrooms” (Cisneros 4). However, in many ways, this house and this dream are unattainable. One of the many things that keeps minorities in poverty is the fact that as minority families move into a neighborhood, slightly wealthier white families move out of it. “Esperanza is aware of how white residents have fled the community to avoid sharing space with people whom they consider to be beneath them” (Roszak 66). A study from Brandeis University shows that this experience is not unique to this book, in fact, housing equity is a large factor in racial socioeconomic inequality. “Residential segregation artificially lowers demand, placing a forced ceiling on home equity for [minorities] who own homes,” (Shapiro 3) thus making it harder for minority families to get out of poverty at all as their houses, a major source of investment, lose value compared to inflation. Esperanza’s family has dreamed of the bigger house, and yet, the house they own is this one, the one on Mango Street. Even if they were to succeed in getting a bigger house, the house of their dreams, it is likely that house too would become less valuable and keep them in poverty. Other women show that the cycle of poverty is hard to break, for various reasons. Ruthie, the daughter of an apartment owner on Mango Street, failed to escape poverty also. She “had lots of job offers when she was young” but instead married and “moved away to a pretty house outside of the city,” (Cisneros 69) using marriage as her source of upward mobility. Unfortunately, her “fairy tale” escape from Mango