As a student at Indiana University, the world is quite literally at the end of your fingertips and it is true that you can do practically anything here. Once you go to college, everyone feels an immediate pressure to get involved in something: A club that will help you make friends or a sport that will help you stay in shape.

Whatever it may be, the easiest way to find something that best fits your interests is undoubtedly the student activities fair, where a large chunk of the clubs at IU line up with booths and informational flyers to help you find your right place. Of course, I went to the fair, but I was more in search of resume fillers and things I thought would look good on future applications if I was involved in them. However, what I found turned out to be so much more.

I was immediately drawn to the Camp Kesem booth when I saw the bright greens and blues and what looked like a big group of friends promoting it. Camp Kesem is a nonprofit organization ran by college students at their universities’ chapters around the nation. They hold a summer camp for kids that have or had parents that have cancer. They provide a support group, second family, and anything that the children need year-round until they have one week with them at camp to give them the escape from reality that they deserve.

With my future dream job being in pediatric oncology, I thought it would be something that would give me more experience working with children and learning how to combat the emotional toll it takes on the kids’ lives. I went into my first meeting expecting it to be like any other club on campus. After just a few meetings with these guys, it was obvious that my expectations were way off.

Aside from the other members of the club being the best role models I’ve ever met in my life, the kids that I have the privilege to meet and work with are the most inspiring people in the world, the club as a whole is something that I could not imagine not being a part of now. You never truly know how much a person is capable of until you hear a five-year-old talk openly to a crowd about his dad’s cancer.

You never know how overwhelmingly supportive of a cause people can be until you personally see your club raise $27,000 in a day for the kids to come to camp for free. Camp Kesem has not only changed my life, but my mindset. I see things with a much more grateful heart now for what I have in my life. I feel as if it is an organization that everyone should know about, whether you know a child that could benefit from the cause, being a donator, or just being a supporter. It is something that can really change the world, helping one child at a time.