The world has not run out of good people to help those in need, and this is evident in the way there are children charities unselfishly sharing time, skills and resources with the less fortunate. However, a good number of charities concentrate on donating food, medicines, clothes, or money. While these are viewed with gratitude, dole-outs have long been questioned as a strategy if the ultimate goal of the assistance is to empower the poor. For buildOn, true charity means breaking the vicious cycle of poverty; that is why it has focused on providing quality education for the youths regardless of gender. The organization does this through programs, such as Building Schools and its After School Service.
A Vicious Cycle to Break
It has become evident that parents who have not been educated are less likely to send their kids to school. This is not because they do not believe in education as a means to a better life; most of them see that education gives people the ability to obtain better employment, perform more satisfactorily, and subsequently earn more. Rather, parents who have not been to school are often living in abject poverty. This poverty is often so extreme there is no money for school. Education, though seen as important, becomes something that children must forego in lieu of food and shelter.
Public schools are a government’s way of addressing poverty and illiteracy in countries like the United States. Unfortunately, even attending a public school comes with its own costs. As a consequence, the kids of illiterate parents who are earning less are more likely to drop out of school. When these children become parents themselves, they will more likely not earn enough to send their own children to school. This is the vicious cycle of economic scarcity that buildOn is trying to break.
After School Service: Inspiring the Community
Underprivileged children and youth are constantly facing big challenges in their lives. For one thing, it is easy to become apathetic in communities where poverty is ever present. In addition to that, high school and adolescence can be a tough time. Cognizant of this potentially overwhelming combination, buildOn has embarked on a program that not only helps put children in school but continues to provide guidance after school. As an organization for children charities, this nonprofit’s After School Service organizes activities that will help the youth see themselves as catalysts for change in their own communities.
The After School Service aims to transform high school kids in 62 American high schools to become responsible young people who will lead in uplifting their homes and communities. The program engages each of these young people to help other kids and seniors in their own economically- strapped neighborhoods.
To equip them for this transformative role, the students are trained to help others. The program gives them the skills to tutor younger children, volunteer at senior centers, help in soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless, restore community facilities, and participate in environmental and clean-up projects. It is amazing how After School Service has inspired the young so that they have become truly responsible individuals – many of them successfully finish high school and proceed to college. Even more amazing is how this youth program is impacting the places where the participants live.
Building Schools: Going Beyond the Community
The Trekking for Knowledge Program offers American students the opportunity to witness poverty beyond their neighborhoods. By sending selected students to poor remote villages in countries like Haiti, Nicaragua and Nepal, the program is providing the students a first-hand look at poverty made worse by lack of basic services and the absence of an opportunity for education.
The students are orientated on how to be sensitive to the culture and needs of their host families. While these young Americans live with local families, their values and their capacity for social responsibility are strengthened. Here, in places where there is barely electricity or water, real life lessons are learned about what deprivation means. But, as the students help build schools and as the community benefits from their work, both the local families and the students begin to learn that many of life’s challenges can be surmounted. The construction of a school helps everyone see that there is a way to navigate through seemingly indestructible obstacles.
These are life-changing lessons that few young Americans can learn from within the four walls of a standard classroom. Through the Trekking for Knowledge Program they will see the fundamental value of education and realize the significance of opportunities they often take for granted back home. The experience is meant to motivate them to finish high school and pursue higher education. It also ensures that the students will learn the value of helping others. They will most likely go back home enlightened and more appreciative of the economic opportunities available to them.
Sustaining Efforts for Long Term Impact
As one of the most relevant children charities today, BuildOn is molding a generation of Americans who will value education and create positive change by exposing them to social realities both in their own neighborhood and abroad. This has come about as a response to local and global situations that do not bode well for the future: The alarming dropout rate among American students who are confronted by a school system in near crisis and the lack of access to basic education of children in poor countries outside of the United States.
The long term impact of the organization is rooted in the transformation of young individuals into passive members of society into agents who have the capacity. As they make their way in the world, they will make full use of their education, and they will be able to build better lives and better communities.
Beyond that however, to ensure that its programs will be sustained, this nonprofit has engaged the support of government as well as corporations and individuals. This support has been earned because of the work that has been accomplished in US schools and in communities in Africa, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Today the organization continues involve people in its mission to break the cycle of poverty. If you want to learn more about what this nonprofit has done, read the book “Walk in Their Shoes” and you will see how it is possible to change the world by building schools.
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