I grew up in a small town called Walkerton in rural Ontario. I lived in a house with a trampoline in the backyard and I walked to school every day. I started my high school's newspaper so that I could work on my portfolio, and eventually landed in the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa. After graduating, I moved to New York City, where I did a summer graduate program in international affairs and globalization through Bard College.
I've had several interesting jobs since settling in New York. I started out working at Discover Magazine, then went on to produce weekly podcasts at the New York Academy of Sciences. Currently, I'm the web and multimedia producer at a non-profit news and research organization called Climate Central.
I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with my boyfriend, Adam, and our cat, Olive, who knows how to fetch.
Why am I doing this?
Long story short, because I can.
I've always had a sense of how lucky I am to have had the opportunities that I've had in life. I've gotten degrees and grants, won fellowships and awards, traveled, and had adventures. I feel that I've really been privileged to be able to live life to its fullest. Spending time in the Philippines was a life-shifting experience. While we were working in the slums and experiencing poverty at its bleakest level, we always had a safe place to retire to at the end of the day. A place with an internet connection, a swimming pool, meals cooked for us, and clean, comfy beds.
Many of us from the Western world struggled with the guilt of "having." The gross disparities between the way we lived at home and the way the people we visited on a daily basis lived seemed fundamentally unfair. But one of the lessons I learned in the Philippines is that I can't feel guilty about being born into a relative level of privilege. What I can do is use the opportunities and privileges I've been lucky enough to have to help people who may not have been as lucky.
$8,000 is no small change to me. I work full-time to cover my rent and chip away at my student loans, and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I'm just beginning to embark on my own life journey, one that will require me to save and make responsible investments. But while $8,000 is a lot of money to me, it is absolutely incomprehensible to Carlo. I don't blame him for thinking that it's probably going to be easy for me pay his way through school. I'm rich to him because I live in America. Because I have an apartment with four rooms, and because the things that seem so basic to me seem like luxury to him. Drinkable tap water, a gas stove, a door that locks, a subway system.
My education has been the single most valuable thing I have experienced in my life. It's been expensive in some cases, but always worth it.
I can't afford to pay for Carlo's tuition by myself, but I can afford to give my time and energy over the course of a few years. I'm hoping that in the long run, it will change Carlo's life, and the life of his family, forever.
