There are so many simple things that most of us have full access to and take for granted. One of the main basic needs we use without realizing its importance is access to clean drinking water because we have gotten so used to it being so accessible to us. Most of us cannot imagine living in situations where we would have to hike dozens of kilometers to quench our thirsts. Another key aspect of our lives that many tend to take for granted is education. I know that, to a certain extent, for a long time I did not realize how lucky I was to be receiving the education that I was receiving. I really did appreciate the time, money and energy that was being put into my education by both my parents and my teachers, but I just did not realize how lucky I was to have all the facilities that I had at my school. All the resources available to me from blackboards, whiteboards and SmartBoards to a library full of books and a library database full of e-books and other useful material for school work or leisure.
As someone who was not an avid reader as a child, I definitely did not realize the importance of having a full library available to me. Ever since I was a kid my parents have taken me to orphanages around their hometown, Kinshasa, DRC, to play with the kids. For about 5 years now, I have been working closely with one orphanage, Fondation Buna, and have become close to the kids in that orphanage in the process. Three years ago, in 2013, the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school I realized that I wanted to do something that had more of an effect on the lives of these children that I was visiting year after year. One day, I was looking around the orphanage with some of the kids that were my age, searching for something that I could try and give them that would help them most. I soon realized that the one thing that the orphanage was lacking was books. There were no books in the orphanage at all. Once I made this realization, I found everything to be empty. My own room had a little bookshelf filled with untouched books and my school had a library overflowing with books, while these kids did not even have textbooks at school let alone a library, and had no books to come home to.
It was then that I realized that I really wanted to do something because even though I was not an avid reader, reading opened my mind, it let me live vicariously through other characters in a multitude of situations where I did not want to be myself. I remember once being caught reading under my covers with a flashlight after lights out, and consequently getting into trouble for it. So many of my memories revolved around books and movies that these kids were not getting the chance to experience. Once I got back home I started a project called Expanding Minds, Broadening Horizons, I got second-hand French books from various sources in Prague, from the Institut Français, that donated over 600 books to my cause, Lycée Français de Prague that donated over 200 books and the rest were personally donated by people at my school and in boxes around the city. Within a few weeks I had a total of 900 books ready to be shipped to Kinshasa.
The next time I went back to Kinshasa, I went to Fondation Buna, and gave them a shelf and donated 400 of the 900 books to them, and eventually expanded the project to 3 other orphanages in and around Kinshasa. We had a whole unveiling of the shelf ceremony where the children even sang and performed at the end. It was beautiful to see the smiles on their faces. They were so happy. I’ve realized that if you give a child a book as a present these days they will more often than not make a face and not be completely satisfied with a book as a present. However these kids were absolutely rejoiced.
Books, something that I have always taken for granted, put huge smiles on their faces. If I want to read a book, I have a couple hundred lying around my house, and if those are not satisfying enough, there are thousands in my school library. The teenagers were as satisfied by the novels they received as the younger children were by the picture books they devoured. This whole experience made me realize that I there are many things that may be familiar to us but could change someone’s entire life. It made me realize the importance of everything I have.
