Many of you are probably wondering about why I wanted to start something like Reach Out and where I got the idea. There are actually a bunch of reasons, so sit back and enjoy the journey!

Back when I was in 8th or 9th grade (or maybe in the summer in between them), I was watching a tape from the 1996 Olympics. I’d recorded a preview show about it, and the show consisted of many documents highlighting many stories of those games. One documentary was about the Yugoslavian basketball team. It showed how the war ruined the players’ dreams of winning a gold medal in the Olympic. During the documentary, they showed a little bit of the war. One scene showed a little girl, probably about 6 or 7 crying probably because her home was being destroyed or because her family members were being injured or killed.

It was that moment that changed my entire mentality on this subject. I wondered to myself “Why should these children have to deal with this stuff”? Why could so many of us not have a real worry in the world, while these children had have their childhoods robbed from them for no fault of there own? I came to the conclusion that nothing that I had ever done entitled me to be living in a better situation than so many of these children. I also came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing anything to help a single one of these kids. It didn’t matter to me that I was only about 13 at the time. What mattered was that I knew that if I really wanted to, I could make some difference, regardless of my age or relative inexperience in the area. I thought about this idea occasionally for about one and half years. Finally, I decided that nothing was going to stop me. I wasn’t going to make any more excuses to myself. I knew that such an idea could make a difference, and nothing was going to hold me back anymore.

Also, I’m sick of the idea of “community service”. Most of the young people, whom I’ve met, do it just for the sake of getting community service hours for college, or for certain requirements. I’ve volunteered in two places in my life. I liked both a lot, and still go to both, however I never felt like I was really doing something that truly made a difference to the people who needed it most. Many community service opportunities just enable paid workers to have less work. Also, I’ve never believed that community service should be counted in hours. Service is daily characteristic of people who care, not people who need to complete hours for a certain requirement, or do it to look good for college. I believe Reach Out helps a group of people who truly need and deserve it. Also, we’re not a community service organization. We help people because WE CARE! We don’t record hours, because this is something that is a part of our lives, not just a part of us for isolated times in our lives. We do things for children, which can’t be measured in hours, but rather in the hopes and dreams of a child who may be given a new beginning in life, because you took the time to care about them.