Conciseness, Punctuation, Proofreading
Poverty is one of the biggest issues in the world today. In highly developed countries such as the United States, there seem to be more important matters such as health care and abortion issues. I am not saying that these issues are unimportant; however, in many third world countries like India, the poverty rate is high. I want to change the reality of poverty to make sure that nobody in this world has to starve.
Fifty percent of the Indian population currently lives below the poverty line. I am shocked by this statistic; it is hard to understand how one out of every two people is poor. Even more surprising is that approximately eighty percent of the population in India lives on less than two dollars a day. Unfortunately, I have known this sad truth since I was a kid; I have seen many instances of poverty in my life and how damaging it is.
I have been to India numerous times in my life; I spent an entire year there, and I visit my relatives frequently. Every time I travel there, I inevitably see many of the homeless. I always donate some money to those I can help but there is no way that I have enough to help everyone. Obviously, some sort of program or business could provide food and shelter to these people more efficiently than I could. I started doing some research about actions that other people have taken to solve this problem. It was in this process that I came across the wonderful vision of Narayanan Krishnan.
Narayanan Krishnan was an “award-winning chef with a 5-star hotel group.”[1] During one of his trips to India, he was shocked when he “saw an old man suffering from acute hunger, eating his own human waste.”[2] He helped this man by providing him with food; this was the moment that changed his life. Upon returning from his trip, he quit his job and started the non-profit group Akshaya Trust. The program started small, feeding thirty destitute Indians. It took time, but the program grew. By September 2011, over 1.2 million meals had been served by his group. The amount of dedication and effort on the part of Mr. Krishnan truly amazes me.
What Mr. Krishnan has done is no small feat. He has saved the lives of countless individuals through willpower and determination. However, considering that there are over 1 billion citizens in India and the poverty rate is close to fifty percent, about 500 million people are on the streets without food. Although 1.2 million meals is a large amount of food, it is nowhere near the amount necessary to help everyone. I want to be able to help the entire impoverished population of India. Thus, I have made it my goal to cut the poverty rate in India by ninety percent.
Such a goal seems impossible for me to reach, considering where I am at right now and the steps I need to take in order to reach that goal. However, I plan to reach this goal before I am fifty, one small step at a time. My first goal on the path to my final vision is to participate in community service activities here in the United States that help the poor. I am sure this will help me understand a little bit of the poverty problem in India. This goal should be reached within my first or second semester at the University of Texas at Austin.
The next goal is to learn the main language spoken in India, Hindi, while I am in college. How can I help people that I cannot even communicate with? Learning conversational Hindi will help bridge the cultural barrier between the people I want to help and me. However, there is one major setback: there are dozens of regional languages in India so knowing just Hindi may not be sufficient. My solution to this problem is that I will ask for multilingual volunteers to work with me in areas with regional languages. After all, I cannot tackle these goals by myself. I will need the assistance of others in order to make my vision come true. This goal should be reached within my four years of college.
After obtaining experience in community service with the poor here in the United States of America, the next step is to go to India and work directly with the homeless. I will volunteer with Akshaya Trust in order to understand some of the difficulties that can arise from trying to help others. Sometimes people simply do not want help or are difficult to deal with for various reasons. I plan to accomplish this goal by the end of the summer of 2013.
Although going to India and helping the poor is a feat in itself, just one trip is not enough. My next goal is to make continuous efforts in helping Akshaya Trust however I can, whether it is by sending donations or by finding other motivated volunteers. I can also travel to India numerous times during the year to volunteer for Akshaya Trust. I plan on going to India at least four or five times for two-month periods each time and finding at least ten other students willing to volunteer for Akshaya Trust. This goal should be reached within my four years of college.
It would be much easier to help Akshaya Trust if I wasn’t in college but I think that in the long run, my college education will provide me with the knowledge I need to make my final vision successful. As mentioned before, I can learn Hindi at the University of Texas at Austin. I can also become more familiar with the issue of poverty, perhaps by taking a relevant class.
After I graduate from college, my goal is to form a non-profit organization with some similar goals of Akshaya Trust but with a different approach. I have read much about poverty as well as the different ideas on how to reduce the poverty rate in countries. Although I find inspiration from Mr. Krishnan, I do not think that providing food and building houses are enough to reduce poverty. The impoverished are poor for various reasons: sickness, injury, old age, as well as a lack of job skills. In forming my non-profit organization, I want to not only provide temporary assistance such as food and housing, but also permanent assistance, such as job training, medical treatment and retirement homes for those of the impoverished that are too old to work. This is what I believe will work. If my organization fails to meets these goals, then I know that this is the wrong way to go about helping others and must then try a different approach. Nevertheless, I still plan on having my organization active by the time I am twenty-eight.
My organization will be small at first; I will depend on local volunteers to help promote my organization. It will initially help the poor in a single state of India. Within five years of its founding, I plan for my organization to be in at least ten states of India. By contacting the media as well as through fundraisers and donations, my organization can receive the attention and funding to grow and help more people. Within fifteen to twenty years of its founding, my organization should be well-known and active in all areas of India, especially the most destitute ones. The poverty rate should noticeably be lowering, perhaps to thirty or twenty percent. Eventually, the poverty rate in India should be lowered to less than ten percent. The ideal situation would be for the poverty rate to be close to zero percent, but I do not think that will happen in my lifetime. Hopefully, my organization will pave the path for many others, decreasing poverty rates all around the world.
Although I have always wanted to plan out my goals for my life, it would not have been possible without the reading and writing skills that I have developed over my school years. Without my reading skills, I would not have been able to gather and assimilate so much information about poverty so quickly. Without my writing skills, I could not have planned out my goals and deadlines. These skills will also be important when I go to India; reading and writing in Hindi will surely play a major role in the success of my organization.
Similarly, the concrete plans that I have made for my leadership vision would not have been possible without the lessons I have learned in my undergraduate studies class with Professor Bump. In this class, I have developed more sympathy and empathy; I find that I am able to understand others’ pains more easily, which is something I must learn to do if I want to help the poor. I have also developed superior writing skills from this class through Professor Bump’s critiques of my essays as well as my colleagues’ critiques. I have also learned to assimilate material quickly from the numerous reading assignments given for the class. Admittedly, I find the class difficult at times, especially since writing does not come easily to me. However, the difficulty of the class is something that I will always remember. The class has shown me that most situations in life are tough; there is no easy way out. I am sure I will encounter tough situations while my organization and I are trying to help the poor. I know that I will be able to handle anything that comes at me because of what I have learned from this class.
[1] Cable News Network (CNN), “Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry,” http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/
[2] Akshaya Trust, “Akshaya’s Helping in H.E.L.P Trust,” http://www.akshayatrust.org/defining_moment.php
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