By Muqadess Gul, CCI Greenheart High School Exchange Student
Muqadess is an exchange student from Pakistan who was placed in Kentucky. She is a Greenheart Club member who has volunteered 236 hours! Below you can read about her adventures in the United States and her experiences volunteering.
“Volunteering is the rent we pay to live on this Earth” – Muhammad Ali.
I am Muqadess Gul, You can call me Gul since my first name is really hard to pronounce. I am an exchange student from the very beautiful, versatile and rich in culture country called Pakistan. I am currently living in Kentucky, USA with the world’s most awesome and loving family “The Roberts”. I had always seen the USA in movies and in my dreams with an utmost desire to visit it one day, and here I am living my dreams! This exchange year is teaching me a lot and is helping me to grow into a better person.
I find volunteering to be a positive energy that spreads happiness easily. It not only makes you happy, but it also makes the people you are helping with your actions and words happy as well.
My very first community service project in America was to do a car wash in order to raise money for my high school’s Mathematics department and we managed to make $300. I had never thought that I would be able to do such a challenging job. It was an amazing and different experience for me. That community service project taught me that no matter how hard a job is, you can do it if you have enough faith in yourself.
One of my favorite volunteering activities is to tutor the students at an elementary school. I go to an elementary school almost three days a week for two hours and tutor the students over there. I help them with mathematics and science. I teach them about my home country and my culture too. I taught them how to write their names in my native language of Urdu. They really enjoy learning about my home country and are very eager to learn more about it. One of the students at the elementary school told me that he bought some books about my home country because he wants to learn more about it and visit it one day.
Whenever I get a chance I present about my home country at my high school. All of the teachers and students are always excited and eager to learn my home country.
The most recent volunteer activity that I did was at the Kentucky Center of Arts. I went there with my local coordinator and some other exchange students. We all volunteered at a theater performance. We helped the audience find their seats. The staff of the Kentucky Center of Arts really appreciated our efforts.
I’m done with almost half of my exchange year and I have a lot of volunteering experiences to share. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the exchange year so that I can gain more volunteering experiences because volunteering brings a lot of positive energy into the lives of all of us.