charity

A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Kendall Ciesemier, the 15-year-old founder of the Kids Caring 4 Kids organization, which provides impoverished African children with food and education. This past September, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with former President Bill Clinton, who came to her high school and spoke at a surprise assembly.

Kendall felt moved to fight for justice in fifth grade, when she watched an Africa special on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” about orphans. One girl her age had lost her family to AIDS, and now she carried the responsibility of raising her younger sibling. Compelled by the orphan’s pain and grief, Kendall signed up to sponsor a child through World Vision that day. Later she expanded her sponsorship to include an entire Zambian village. Her charity eventually grew into a nonprofit organization, Kids Caring 4 Kids.

“It’s gotten so much easier for people to join the force to fight AIDS,” Kendall said at a coffee shop in January 2008.

I work as a cashier right now and see all different types of people on any given night. Dealing with both the happy customers and the angry, disrespectful pricks is my job. I take the blame, fix the problem, and smile the whole time. But last night I had a customer that really stuck with me.

What is love? I am posing this question out of curiosity. There seems to be a growing number of people who don't believe in love due to its non-quantifiable nature. This has been my experience especially in academics. So, for those of you who do believe in love, how do you define it?

My friend and I were driving to the And 1 Allstar basketball tournament Easter evening located in Springfield, Illinois. As we came up to a red light i noticed a man sitting on a bench. He had a shaggy, ungroomed beard and clothes that looked as though there were more holes than threads. He had a single garbage bag that was placed beside him containing atleast one more weathered outfit.

I have a hypothetical situation for you:
You don't know me, and you don't care about me. I need a kidney to live. My kidneys cannot function on their own.
You have a kidney. I decide to sneak into your house, tranquilize you, and against your will connect one of your kidneys to my body and exploit it.

Greed.
A selfish, excessive desire.
It has become so mainstream,
So common in our present day.
Its connotation has become more and more reputable.
Something not to be ashamed of,
Although I believe it’s something to be looked down upon.

Some say it is controllable,
But I beg to differ.
There is something inside you
That triggers that crave.

A volcano of envy,

Size 12, Times New Roman is the blue or black pen of the 21st Century. Many students take for granted the ability to Google a subject or make a PowerPoint presentation, but there are students who are likely to treat these terms as a foreign language.

My father once told me that in order to make money, you have to give money to charities, etc. That it was a type of divine karma, powered by God. Later, when watching the Democratic debates between Clinton and Obama, he became angered and yelled, "And where is all that money coming from?