Hey everyone, I need some critique on this essay which I plan to submit as the main one for all my universities. All comments are welcome
Be brutally honest!!
My first schooling experience took place in a Malawian refugee camp where my father worked as a physician. Despite not realizing it then, that was my first exposure to the extreme poverty that plagues the African continent. Through my father's changing jobs, our family was forced to move to a number of different countries spanning across Eastern Africa. With each job he took up and with every country we moved to, the same stark reality faced us; poverty. Having lived in Africa, I have witnessed poverty first hand my entire life; even within my own extended family.
Time and again, on our family's annual summer visits to my grandmother in rural Uganda, I wondered why her home was never lit by electricity. That water had to be fetched about a kilometer away on a daily basis was a fact I failed to grasp. That my own age mates were to get up at the crack of dawn to go plough the farm in place of going to school and that even those enrolled in school lacked the necessary means to stay on was disconcerting. I used to think that it was a choice one chose to live with; I was wrong.
It was only when I entered my mid-teens that I realized the resources available to me to make a real change. I started by joining Model United Nations at my high school. Through MUN, I found an outlet to voice the many concerns I had; more so, those affecting the community in which I had lived my whole life. And while MUN was an enriching experience for the two years that I was involved, I felt the need to do more, to really take that extra step in reaching out to my community. For that, I searched for a way to implement sustainable change within my community; to empower them to take responsibility for their well being and development. I translated all that I learnt from my experience in MUN and the time spent interacting with different people in rural Uganda over my summer holidays into a book drive that I been running for three years now. The aim of the drive was to donate reading and textbooks to under resourced schools in Nairobi so as to spark an interest in learning within the pupils. I believed then and I still do today, that if I can pass on the gift of knowledge to the younger generations in my community then with time they too will not only enrich their own lives but also those of the people in their own communities.
The drive did not only give me the chance to make a difference for someone else but it also augmented my own love of learning. And with my passion for science, I am immensely interested in pursuing an engineering degree, which is rare for an African girl in my community. The way I see it, technological development remains one of the most fundamental factors in the advancement of not only Africa but also other less developed countries worldwide. I hope to use a college education to take wherever I go, a spirit of innovation and thereby contribute as much as I can in the improvement of the lives of the people in my society.
