Unlocking Compassion through Experience

‘ Going on a volunteer trip like this means breaking away from your creature comforts. Everyone on this earth should do it and if you’re given the opportunity – run with it. For our agency, it was a positive move getting involved with the Foundation for this reason alone.

We did a lot in fourteen days like visiting health clinics and schools to donate goods, assisting at an orphanage and building a house.

I never thought that in my life I’d build a house but I put it on my bucket list and ticked it off again.

It was a rewarding experience to see the houses that the previous teams have built. We heard the stories from the people who lived there. It gave them an opportunity to say thank you and us an opportunity to see proof of the Foundation’s work.

After being a volunteer, you come back with a changed mind set. The stories we only hear on the news become real. Poverty is a strange thing. If I’m asked to describe what it is after being in a developing country, it is the absence of anything – it is nothing.

We can’t feel guilty of being born somewhere, but I do feel guilty of taking more from this earth than I give back. I got given an education which is everything but these guys got nothing.

To sum it up, the trip can only be described as a humbling experience. Stories like this are something that everyone should get the opportunity to tell and for this reason I encourage anyone who is thinking of going on a Foundation trip to just do it.’

–      Catherine Paglia, Volunteer, (formally KWP! Advertising)