AREUM ARIA LEE

My name is Areum Aria Lee. I grew up in a Christian family that was very adamant on keeping a consistent relationship with my childhood church. Therefore, I guess you can say I practically grew up in my church. I spent every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in my home church, Shining Star Community Church. Because of this, I grew up knowing the importance and impact of being nice to others and helping others. They preached to me to be nice to everyone, help those in need despite the difficulties, and to accept and love all people. This is where the morals that I still have to this day come from.     As I grew into a young teen, I become more involved in community service outside of my church. I got connected to organizations such as community orchestras, domestic and international mission trips, and the Red Cross. All of these experiences helped me to directly see the impact that service had on others. I saw how much a little bit of my time and effort could greatly help others and this helped to cure my passion for volunteering even more. It made me happy to see that I could do something to help others feel happy. That was when I had one of the greatest experiences in my life when I went to Guatemala for about a week on an international mission trip last year. Although people say that service and missions can be performed even in our own backyard and that every community need help, going out to a third-world country that really needed our help impacted me greatly. Guatemala was a place that I had never seen anything like before. The walls were glues with glass shards in order to keep people out of homes, the buses were about to burst with the amount of people stuffed inside of them, and everyone’s clothes seemed to consistently have an eerie shade of dirt brown. However, as I worked with children, parents, and organizations during my week there I was so surprised at how happy the people living there were. Everyone wore a smile on their face and were never too busy or mean to help someone who was in need. They were living in conditions unimaginable in my town of Burke, Virginia but everyone seemed to be ten times happier than anyone I have ever met in my hometown. This irked me as strange and unusual, how could they be so happy when they’re conditions of living were so awful? When they had to worry about violence and death at the turn of every corner? They’re joy touched my heart and made me want to help not only them but other people who were need of help even more. I wanted to use my blessings of a nice environment and good sturdy education for those who did not have the opportunities I had.

     So, as I came to Virginia Tech I knew that I wanted to continue to have an outlet to perform community service but I didn’t know how, or even if I did I felt that I would not proactively go out there if I was busy with school. However, through my roommate, I found the opportunity to join a living learning community that would make community service and volunteering readily available to me while I go through my first year of college. I believed it would be a good way for me to find volunteer opportunities and meet people who had the same passion as me.

I hope that SERVE will open up different service activities that I never had the abilty, connections, or courage to do.