Update to my White Coats Reflection

This post is an update to my White Coats reflection that I made back on February 27th.

"The White Coats group ended last December, 2013. It was a nice experience for me to see these young, filipino children who aren't as fortunate as I am and see how happy they were. It felt good to see them listening when I was teaching the experiments we were going to conduct and see them smiling when they saw their finished product."

I want to delve deeper into what I wanted to say. While I was thinking back to the memories I had while I was in White Coats, I remembered that the young kids that we were teaching were all very poor and couldn't afford good education. The experiments we were doing with them were a completely new experience to them. They never did science experiments in their whole life. One of the things I believe in is equality. I understand that it's an incredibly hard challenge to make everyone equal but I don't want these young children to not experience fun things in their childhood such as science experiments. When the children were doing the experiments and listening to us intently, they were thoroughly interested in what htey were doing and what they were learning. It brought a smile face as well as to others to see that they were having fun while learning. It made me more comfortable being around children. That benefits me in many ways because I am a Senior and I'm supposed to be a role model to young children.

Reflection: GIN Dialysis

Although this activity isn't completed yet and I hope this activity continues on for years to come, it's time for me to write a small reflection. On September 23, 2014, myself and a few others in the awareness sub-group within GIN Dialysis presented in front of Middle and Upperschool during Chapel. Our plan is to slowly but steadily bring awareness to people about dialysis (what it is, how it's treated, etc). We are starting locally and hopefully we could grow larger in the future. While I was presenting in front of the school, I had a sudden thought. I don't prepare for my presentations, I just let things flow. One of the things that I said was that I don't want to create dependency. What I mean is that I don't want the patients to become dependent on our money and support. Ethically, I don't know how else we could help the patients without helping them with money and being there for them. I just don't want them to be dependent on us, especially if for some reason this group doesn't continue in the future and suddenly the patients have lost support.

Update: GIN Dialysis Group

I've decided to continue working in the GIN Dialysis group this year. On September 2, we had our second group meeting. In the meeting, we elected offices (Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary) and split everyone into three different sub-groups (fundraising, awareness, and media). I decided to join the awareness group because I believe that being in the awareness group would make the most difference. I want people to understand what dialysis is, how it affects people (especially in the local community of Baguio), and what we could do to help. Last year when we went to various clinics to learn about the people who have dialysis, it was a very emotional time for me. It was sad to hear their stories. There was one particular woman who I interviewed and she was telling me how she could barely afford her treatment whilst paying for her daughter's education. Her family was split apart and nobody really cared for her. She has a sister that would come every once in a while but apart from that, she had nothing. It made me want to do something to change her life and other's lives in a good way. Nobody should be left alone when they go through hard times.