Evening of Awareness

“Things are to be used and people are to be loved, but the problem in today’s world is that people are used and things are loved.”

At Evening of Awareness on January 27, I reflected on this quote while watching a fabulous presentation by senior Regina Chau about the Presentation CI trip to Zambia last summer. Seven different speakers put on presentations about trips they had gone on or programs they had participated in that made a difference in the world, which was appropriate as the evening’s theme was “the power of students to affect change.”

The evening was put on by CI and was hosted by junior Katja Kane-Foempe and seniors Anne Marie Tran and Kerynne Tejada. The night ran smoothly with seven different presenters, each representing a different trip or program that had worked to make a difference. These included the San Jose and San Francisco Urban Plunges, the trip to Zambia, the Casa de Clara program, the sophomore service trip to West Oakland/SF, the Global Women’s Issues class members talking about issues facing women around world, and the SOA trip to Georgia.

The presentations were impressive, well put together and, most of all, very thought-provoking. The night started out with a fantastic speech by Sacred Heart representative Todd Banks. He spoke of freedom fighters and how we all have the power and call to change someone’s life, if not change the world. “Tomorrow, if not today, you’re going to change the world,” he said. Banks also talked about how these programs and trips were the first steps in doing just that. These were the programs that changed people’s lives, and the trips that brought awareness to injustices in the world.

Banks also noted that social injustices can be changed with small steps. “Sometimes the answer is simple,” he said, “so listen and they’ll tell you what they need.” Sometimes it is not a large-scale food drive that is necessary, but just a loaf of bread out of your own kitchen, or a jacket out of your closet. He closed by encouraging the audience to “be the freedom fighter God has created you to be.”

After such inspiration from Banks, we split up into different classrooms to watch different presentations we had signed up for. Senior Mary Clare Bernal shared her experience in the San Francisco Urban Plunge in one of these first presentations, with an outstanding PowerPoint on the different places her group had visited. She spoke of visiting with the poor in a soup kitchen the first day, and how it changed her whole perspective on poverty and social issues such as this.

“They’re just like us,” she said, “but with different circumstances.” Her group stayed with the Presentation sisters in San Francisco and spent the trip visiting and working in many different places in San Francisco. They visited the Tenderloin Children’s playground, which is a safe place for the children of the area to hang out rather than just being on the streets, and a place called The Lantern, where they taught ESL classes. When Bernal finished her presentation, we made valentines to be sent to the children at the Tenderloin.

After a juice and cookies break, the next presentation I visited was about Zambia, which was put on by senior Regina Chau. She spoke of the incredible poverty in the areas she visited, and how impressive it was that these people still had hope. The group visited an orphanage, and she talked about how, even there, all the children were very happy with hopes for the future and were glad to see her group. They had “the biggest smiles on their faces,” she said. Even in such difficult positions, people worked hard to get by and live well.

The group visited schools that had been put together for kids whose parents had been lost to AIDS, where the whole school was run by volunteers. They had to raise their own money, and worked hard to do so. The group stayed with Presentation sisters and visited several schools, a community center, an orphanage, a hospice, and many other places during their visit.

After the second presentation, everyone returned to the theater and broke up into groups to decorate a piece of fabric for a patchwork quilt and to reflect on the real meaning of the presentations of the evening. We talked about the different presentations we had gone to and the different places or programs they had worked with, and how all of these things work to bring hope to such difficult situations. Sometimes all that is needed is a ray of hope to give someone the courage to help a situation, and all of us have the power to bring about that ray of hope.