One Child, One Smile, One day at a Time.

Yesterday we heard from speaker Cory Ciochetti. A professor and business man, he dished out to our students a lot of valuable life advice. He asked everyone to be honest with ourselves. Are we good people? Can we even define what a good person is? Cory also talked a lot about character and integrity. He mentioned that integrity is “how you treat a person who can do nothing for you in return.” What a perfect introduction to today’s speaker, Maggie Doyne. Maggie left on a gap year trip just after she graduated high school. Like so many of our Operation Smile students, she “knew a lot about the things she was doing at school, but [she] didn’t know anything about who [she] was. After walking around a lot of Asia she stumbled upon a village in Nepal that changed her life. She started with just one child, and told herself if she could change their life, it would be enough. But like Maggie says so often, helping people is addicting and before she knew it she was the adoptive mother of around 40 children. She has built both the Kopila Valley home and then Kopila Valley School. Every year she receives between 600-800 applications for her program. Can you imagine? All of those children are so desperately trying to get an education, and yet in American schools we constantly sit around complaining about having to go to class and do homework. Going to school is a privilege that most of the world does not have even though it is proven that better and more education leads to so many advantages, especially for young girls. I think that we could all take a very important lesson from Maggie. Getting an education can be the start of something incredible for so many kids in the world today, whether they live in New York or Kenya or Nepal. So many people feel that unless they create a giant movement that changes the lives of millions, it is a failure. We need to change our thinking to believe that changing the life of one child is enough, because like Maggie said it is. Changing the life of one child can start a chain reaction. We have a responsibility to change the world. Like Cory Ciochetti mentioned yesterday, we have no right to come into this world and leave it the way we found it. It is no longer acceptable for us to be passive and hope for things to get better. As students we are the generation that is going to end poverty, bring more education, and change the world. So what if instead of complaining about going to school, we went out and built them? What if instead of waiting on someone else to do, we start changing the world, now, by ourselves? We can start with one child, one school, and one smile at a time. It takes just one moment to decide that you are going to make a difference, and then act upon it. Like Cory said, we have to fight for the things the matter and we can’t let people tell us “no” just because we are young. Maggie Doyne didn’t wait to make a difference and neither should you. Go out and ask for help from your friends, family, and strangers. Start a fundraiser, babysit, get a job waitressing and do whatever it takes to fund your dream of making a difference. Decide what you want to change and do it. Don't expect overnight results, because it can take time, but most importantly never give up. Even if its just one person you change, it will change forever.