I could write some reflections on my experience in Yuzhong, or I could talk about why PEACH is important to me, but I think this essay that I wrote at age 17 provides a fresher perspective--it's all the wonder and idealism (and I have to admit, self-congratulation) that I couldn't pull off now:

Barren dirt fields, a woman leading a yak, and sad brick walls bobbed up and down as they passed by. I was riding in a cranky old van down an uneven dirt road in rural Yuzhong County, China. I knew I had to be there. I knew I had to Make A Difference In The World. My social justice class had fired up my youthful idealism, and I knew my Girl Scout Gold Award project had to be something that really mattered.

            Yuzhong is in western China, an hour away from the nearest airport by car, and worlds away from the booming China of Beijing. The van brought us—my father, our guide, and me, all bundled up in winter coats—to the Second Middle School of Yuzhong. There, the students, while cheerful and studious, had only thin jackets to keep out the December air.

            Seeing the children learn in bare, concrete classrooms with only a coal stove for heat, I grew determined to support their education in some way. I interviewed teachers to better understand their situation, and heard many of the same things at the three different schools I visited. “On average, each student has ten Yuan to live off of each week.” Ten Yuan is one dollar and twenty cents. “One school meal costs at least one Yuan.” The numbers hardly add up to three meals a day. If food was already such a hardship, how much harder was it to stay in school? It was an unimaginable life, and learning about it only confused me. I wished all of their problems away, yet I felt so powerless to solve even one.

            When I spoke to the students, I was too shy to ask about their life at home or how they managed with so little. After all, I was from mei guo, America, and I must have been a sort of princess in their eyes. However, they were eager to share their dreams for the future. One girl wanted to become a fashion designer. The girl, Dai Shu Ping, was ranked first in her class, a very brilliant and very determined girl of fourteen. As for her home life, her explanation could not have been as compelling as what I saw with my own eyes.

As I was walking to her house built on the side of a mountain, everything was beige. I hardly noticed that the blur of color in the corner of my eye was a rusted bicycle, some pots, a bush, and discarded rope. The junk often seen on the side of the road in Yuzhong simply blended into the dirt and the buildings. However, when I reached her house, the shock would not let me ignore what I saw. It was unavoidably clear that her home was a quarter the size of my classrooms at school, made of dirt and wood, and housed her entire family.

            It was this image that drove me to work as hard as I did for my project, which I named Fighting for Education in Yuzhong. Before I left, I worked out how I would find sponsors among my classmates in America to send forty of the most needy children to school. Back home, the children’s hopes for their futures kept me awake at night, as I plotted the next steps I would take. For them, I met with teachers and administrators to get permission to make presentations about Yuzhong in class. For them, I called strangers for help when it seemed as if I might not find enough sponsors. Because of them, I realized that the words “Gold Award” on my college application hardly mattered to the fight for their education. In fact, none of my grades or test scores can ever infuse my life with as much purpose as the children of Yuzhong have. I will know that I have made an impact not from any awards I receive, but from watching these children go on to succeed in school, elude poverty, and make a difference in the world.