Today’s youth are doing a great job participating in meaningful acts of service. Teens from all over L.A. County and from all different streams of Judaism are volunteering for a wide range of great causes and organizations. Their inspiring stories will be highlighted here:

The flashes of tropical crimsons as the elderly van pulled up into a rural tattered village I was asked to call home are always present in my humble mind. I remember the half naked children covered only in shredded rags running around in the excitement of the whitewashed automobile, of what it carried, of what it represented. I was scared. Being thrown into an unknown world of infinite unknowns was not what I called and wanted to call home. 

Placing one foot in front of the other, I did my best not to stumble out of the van. A massive audience of pure black faces watched as I attempted my best movie star smile and half cupped wave. The indigenous children ran up grabbing my hands pulling me into the crowd, and I thought to myself, “where is my body guard?” They kissed my head and hugged my hips and talked in a tongue that was unknown. And I smiled and they smiled back.

They were a kind group. They asked in their language if I wanted something to drink or eat, but I was too proud to say yes. So I starved and they watched and smiled. They led me into a silent room of foam beds and I picked one and sat.

And sat.

The next day a dignified native wearing circular white washed frames asked why I had come to Rawasa. And I responded simply “to help”. He then outstretched his brown arm towards my pale hand and pulled me from my foam throne. He asked me to follow him, and I did.

I was lead to a peculiar landscape which was spotted with inconsistently positioned planks hammered into the dirt, creating circles of moisture around each indentation. Across from the boards was an old fort with a half-finished painting of a brown woman holding an uncolored child who was holding a story-tale book. And I stared at it, and wondered. The brown man told me to cover the fort with an iridescent blue, which I will never forgot, partially because it stained the green skirt I was wearing and partially because it was a blue unknown to me. So I took a brush and painted over the fort.

The Afternoon brought the sun and the children. Billions of rays of children marched up towards the fort behind a mother. I just assumed she was a mother by the infant she held in her arms just above her hips, but I was later told by an adolescent native that she was just a school tutor. She told them to be silent and they followed her inside. A young girl who lagged behind the group grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, to ease the blame when the teacher would call upon her as tardy. She was not the only one behind.

The woman was holding the infant in her left hand and a piece of worn out chalk on the other. The Black board was now gray, but the children could not tell. They looked at me and smiled displaying their toothless grins. They said something and handed me “Alice in Wonderland”. They pointed to the words violently, and I began to read. As I told the story about girl stuck in a fantasy their eyes widened. I thought I heard one brown boy whisper to another about the word “fantasy”, but it was probably just the heat from the sun. Their little faces were happy and I finally was happy.

I don’t remember exactly where I was, or exactly the true events of the story. The feeling, the emotion, the love that I felt was real. For the first time in a long time I was giving joy to a people, and in the end I realized they helped me a lot more than I could ever help them. They gave me a calling in life; I wanted to make people smile. I spent two weeks in Rawasa and as the same old white-washed van picked me up I was escorted by a thousand hands and a thousand toothless grins.