It has become more than a hobby; it’s a passion. Even more impressively, teens are going out of their way and traveling far and wide to help out communities that don’t only benefit themselves but also others around them. To illustrate, Daniel Riff, a senior from Palo Alto, California traveled to New Orleans to help victims of Hurricane Katrina over the Memorial Day weekend. Riff was one of 25 Bay Area teens who spent a few days in New Orleans to help the community clean up from the hurricane. Namely, Riff and the group of twenty-five, performed a variety of jobs which include, gutting houses, cleaning up elementary schools, ripping out carpet, pulling out wood paneling, and knocking out drywall. Although houses looked fine from the exterior, the inside was a mess and you could see from one side of the house to another. Clearly, Riff thought he was definitely helping out by spending the weekend down in New Orleans, however, at the same time “helping” people by ripping down their houses is very sad and no one wants to experience anything like …show more content…
As a freshman at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island De Bruyne took a class called “A Global Perspective” which motivated her to contribute to international causes. From her college's mission statement “the university encourages students to work for a world that is harmonious, just, and merciful,” she took inspiration from that and decided to find an orphanage in Africa where she could volunteer in the summer. She found the By Grace Orphanage and saw that it took volunteers. De Bruyne fell in love with her volunteer work! To illustrate the great impact it had on her, De Bruyne has brought back more and more people each summer she returned to the orphanage. Now, six Salve students will be working together to create an even greater difference for this organization. Because of her great work, the orphanage received more than $60,000 to move outside of the slum and relocate into a nicer area. Leila De Bruyne and her friends established a nonprofit organization called “Flying Kites Kenya” which raises this money. Clearly, Leila De Bruyne’s volunteer work is an antithesis of the self-centered