Paper

Jacob Hicks

Dr. Jill Darling

Composition 105 Writing and Rhetoric 1

6 December 2014

One Step at a Time

            Everybody, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, is part of a community. Yet there are people struggling in every community due to lack of money, poor health, or a multitude of other problems. Although those situations may seem hopeless, that is not the case. It is overwhelming to see all the hardships people have and to think of ways to ease them. Instead of trying to solve every problem at once, we need to take one step at a time to try to make the world a better place.

            In high school I tried to make sure I was aware of what was happening around the world. I watched the news and saw all the negative things that people face, such as financial hardships and unemployment. I became disgusted, and I knew it was time for me to help. In my senior year, I was accepted into the National Honor Society (NHS). One of the main purposes of the NHS is community service. Throughout that year, all ninety NHS students put together several projects designed to make the world a better place.

            The first NHS fund-raiser I was involved in was Adopt a Family. There are thousands of people who live in and around the Livingston County area and struggle to get by. At Christmastime, these families find it hard to put a meal on the table let alone provide their children with presents. The purpose of Adopt a Family is to gather donations of presents or money. I and fifteen other people collected information about several low-income families in our area, including age, gender, and what they wanted for Christmas. A few of the members of the NHS and I went to Barnes and Noble in Brighton to wrap gifts for customers, and we asked them to donate to our fund-raiser. We were able to provide enough presents for fifteen families, who were thankful for what they received.

            It felt great to help families who would not have been able to afford presents the opportunity to experience a Christmas they had always dreamed about. Helping fifteen families may not seem like much, but we were only high school students and could not afford to help every family in the community. If there were more charities like Adopt a Family to help the less fortunate, we would slowly make the world a better place, one step at a time.

            Vicki Julian wrote Simple Things to Make This World a Better Place. Her book contains several inspirational quotes, including this one: “But fortunately, to really make a difference for ourselves and our fellowman, it doesn’t require major actions or sacrifice” (4). This proved true for my NHS group. We had neither a ton of money nor much time to devote to charity, but we were able to help by using the resources we did have. If more people were aware of how little effort is required to help a family in need, there would be fewer families spending the holidays without gifts.

            The next project on the agenda during my senior year in the NHS was the House Project in Detroit. Growing up in Brighton, it is sometimes hard to imagine what life would be like without having a roof over my head. The sad truth is that there are thousands, even millions, of people who are homeless. The purpose of the House Project was to travel to Detroit and repair a house that was in poor condition. We had about thirty students help on this project, whether it was with landscaping, picking up garbage, or cleaning the inside of the house. By the end of the day, we had changed the run-down house into a clean and welcoming place to live. Detroit has a huge population of homeless people, and because we were able to fix that house, we were able to give a homeless family a new home.

            There is no greater feeling than the one you experience when you help make a difference in the lives of others. Although some people may believe it is unsafe to travel to a city such as Detroit, the more help places like that can get, the safer they will become. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass writes, “Are ye a slave for life?” (335). The answer would be yes if nothing were done to attempt to escape to a free state. The same holds true for improving run-down areas. If people would offer some help, no matter what it is, the city would eventually become a better place, one step at a time. But, if no effort is put forth in improving the conditions of Detroit and other cities in similar situations, the citizens have nobody other than themselves to blame.

            Illness is one of the most serious problems people encounter in today’s world. With this in mind, the students of the NHS decided to put together a blood drive to encourage people to donate blood to patients in the Livingston County area. Our goal was to attract at least fifty people, but when the day came, about 200 people donated blood. Because the blood that a person donates can be given to multiple people, we were able to help over 500 people suffering from various illnesses.

            In Paul Loeb’s book Soul of a Citizen, he writes, “When we think of the problems of the world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and to become paralyzed. The way to avoid this, as Martin Luther suggested, is to proceed at our own pace, step by step, breaking down our goals into manageable tasks” (64). When I think about all of the people in the world who are sick, it is overwhelming. But looking back on what our NHS group was able to accomplish, I realize that people need to set subgoals and promote events such as blood drives to make people more aware of how they can help.

            Around the same time as the blood drive, our NHS group also put together a canned food drive. The food we collected was donated to Gleaner’s Food Bank, which provided it to low-income people around Brighton. To persuade more people to donate, our school competed against Howell High School (Brighton’s rival) to see who could collect the most cans of food. Douglas Bernstein, an expert in psychology and author of Essentials of Psychology, says, “People are pulled toward behaviors that offer positive incentives and pushed away from behaviors associated with negative incentives” (302). The reward for the winning school was quite an incentive for kids to donate, but I truly believe that, even if there were no prize, there would have been a large turnout. Each school collected over 2,000 cans of food. Considering the fact that the number of kids in each school is a little above 2,000, it appears that many students were involved. The success of the canned food drive allowed many poor families to have one less thing to worry about. The quote from Loeb that I previously cited also applies to the canned food drive. There are many people around the world who worry every day about how they will find their next meal. The only way to address the problem is by people getting more involved in their communities and donating what they can to those in need.

            All of the programs and charities that I have previously mentioned are great examples of things people can do together to make the world a better place. However, there are a number things people can do individually, without having to be involved in a group or organization that can still improve the overall well-being of the world. For example, I am a strong believer in recycling things, whether it is paper, bottles, or anything else you can think of. The act of recycling is rather easy, and requires little to no effort whatsoever. According to a recycling organization called Keep America Beautiful, “In 2009, Americans recycled 82 million tons of materials. The resulting CO2 emission reduction is equivalent to taking 33 million passenger vehicles off the road” (Pulley). Even though the recycling that I do isn’t a large amount when looking at the total amount of recycling that is done each year, the more people that become involved, the cleaner the world will be.

            Another issue people can take into their own hands without being a member of a large group is racism. I find it disturbing when I hear and read about all of the things going on in the world that involve conflicts between different races. “We’ve all been there. You see or hear something racist and you want to say or do something but you’re not sure how to go about it. It takes guts to stand up to racism – but you should never put your physical safety at risk. There are plenty of things you can do to make a difference that don’t involve confrontation” (“What Can You Do”). This quote is one of the most influential things I have ever read. It doesn’t take a group of ninety students to stand up to an issue such as racism. Things such as simply talking to somebody about racism or reporting it to the police can be done by one person. If people focused on improving issues such as racism and recycling by taking action, more people will follow their footsteps and help make a cleaner, and safer world to live in.

            Although there are many socioeconomic problems nowadays, it is interesting to think about what the world would be like if enough people put enough effort into solving those problems. If, for example, fund-raisers such as Adopt a Family took place in every state in the United States around Christmastime, many more parents could provide presents for their children. The same principle applies to the building project, the canned food drive, and the blood drive. If there were enough people in the world willing to donate food or blood or money or to volunteer their time to fix up a run-down house, we would definitely be living in a less stressful world.

            Liya Kebede, a writer for the Huffington Post, says, “In a hundred years, how do you want the world to be? Everybody should get together to make the world a better place.” Her observation is eye-opening because almost all of the problems in the world can be solved if there is enough effort from the people. Slowly but surely, one step at a time, the world would become a better place.

            I have been a witness to many of the struggles that Americans face every day. Although I may not be affected by poverty, starvation, or poor living conditions, I am aware of all of those things, and I want to continue to do my best to be actively involved in improving the world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step” (qtd. in Kuriansky). It is certainly overwhelming to try and solve all of the problems in the world at once. It would be exhausting, and quite impossible to say the least. Instead of one person trying to be a hero and do everything, there needs to be equal help from everybody in the world that can afford to do so. It will certainly also take a lot of time for people to notice a change. The charities and organizations that are set up are only part of the solution to the problems in the world; the other way to truly make the world a better place is to actually inform people of the issues. If nobody knows about the homeless population of a city, or how many ill people need blood, there is no way of fixing those problems. My purpose in this paper is to explain what people can do to make the world a better place. I assume that the audience knows that the problems of the world will never be solved, but I know that, with a little time and effort, the issues previously mentioned can be improved.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bernstein, Douglas. Essentials of Psychology. 5th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2009. Print.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Dover, 1845. Print.

Julian, Vicki. Simple Things to Make This World a Better Place. CreateSpace, 2012. Print.

Kebede, Liya. “Liya Kebede Quotes.” BrainyQuote. BrainyMedia.com, 2001. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

Kuriansky, Judy. “Martin Luther King Jr. Words of Wisdom: Apply to Your Life.” Huffpost. 20 Jan. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Loeb, Paul Rogat. Soul of a Citizen. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010. Print.

Pulley, Brenda. "Recycling Facts and Stats." Keeping America Beautiful. N.p., 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.

"What Can You Do?" What You Say Matters. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.