This post was submitted by Ivy Tech student and ASB participant Jamie H.

So I leave in ten days. Should I start packing now? Wait, I’m not going on vacation, I’m going to volunteer. I don’t think the locals are going to care if I have on a Diesel watch. There are so many things just streaming through my mind. I’m nervous. I’m excited. I’m scared. This is not going to be the first time that I see a community in dire need of food, healthcare, or schools. Those are problems that I grew up with in rural Kentucky. But the idea that I have of poverty is the American ideal. As an impoverished child in America I was afforded an education, and access to healthcare. All things that I took for granted.

Am I ready to push the boundaries of my definition of poor! I don’t think that as a white American male that I’m qualified to speculate about what I’m about to see and experience. I am ready, however, to challenge myself and expand my scope of experience. I have repeatedly resisted the temptation to look up fun facts about Calnali, or the surrounding areas. I want it to be completely foreign. I do keep looking at Google Earth so I can see exactly where in the world I’m going to be, but I want to be shocked and appalled! I need to be shocked and appalled. I don’t want to be desensitized before I get there, otherwise the things that I’m about to confront head-on will be as easy to ignore as the homeless man who stands by the stop sign by Wendy’s. And isn’t that the point? To compare and challenge my definition of poverty and need to what is actually going on in the world. So yeah I’m ready. I’m still scared and nervous, but I have never been more excited about anything in my life.