Learning to Interact with the World Preparing for a Life of Service for Others May 2006

by Cynthia Macias
Photos by Russell Byrne

I was born in America but grew up in Mexico.
I only came back to the States three years ago and basically had to learn English as a second language. I had three English classes my first year here and by the time I was done I had learned to speak English. Now I’m a Senior at Liberty High School in Brentwood and have been working with the Brentwood Rotary Interact Club on our campus since my sophomore year. Last year I was vice president of the club, and this year I’m the club president.

People and organizations from across East County were represented. Last year more than 4,600 of these events were held across the country and around the world raising more than 350 million dollars for the American Cancer Society.

Rotary at Liberty
Rotary Interact clubs are student associations formed for the purpose of promoting the involvement of students in community service. The Liberty Interact Club is an active energetic group. Our Rotary sponsor, Jeff Shultz, is himself an enthusiastic high-energy individual who invests a lot of time and resources in encouraging us to identify and meet our individual and club goals.

The greatest experience of my life was attending Rotary’s Camp Royal in Redding. Royal is a leadership camp designed to develop skills and teach campers how to be a better person. The camp program led us through a process of getting to know ourselves and learning how our minds work. On the basis of that insight, we began to learn how to lead others.

There were 150 students from all over the Bay Area in attendance, and all of them were like me. We had different personalities, but all of us shared a love for studying and mastering difficult subjects. We enjoyed competition, loved sports, and enjoyed belonging to clubs. All of us were really involved in many activities and were seeking to do more. We developed close relationships and before long we had become a big family. We learned a lot and accomplished a lot. After the week was over it was difficult to leave.

The Liberty Interact Club does a lot of things to help us make a difference in the world. The club was founded five years ago and has developed a strong foundation. Each year underclassmen step up into leadership positions. Now we have grown sufficiently large so that it requires a number of activities to keep everyone busy. We try to plan many activities so that any student can find places to plug in. If you have to miss one event another will be coming up soon.

Each year we assist with a number of community events such as the Historical Society Fundraisers and the annual fall Marsh Creek Clean-up. During Christmas we sponsored a book drive for Oakland’s Children’s Hospital and ended up collecting more than a hundred books.

Last Christmas we also made Christmas cards and delivered them to residents of five area convalescent homes. We sang carols and visited with the people. It was heart-warming to see how happy the elderly people were to have us visit them. We took a picture of one old fellow named Harold, and then made a return visit to deliver his picture to him. He was delighted with our visit. He kept singing us Hawaiian love songs and pretended to flirt with us. It was a merry experience for everyone, I think. We all did a lot of laughing together.

We also met a resident named Ruth who had graduated from Liberty High School in 1934. She told us stories about how small the school and the town was back in those days. She was very happy to have someone to share her ancient memories with. We had a lot of fun listening to stories about things that happened before our parents were even born. We’re trying to find a 1934 Lion’s yearbook so we can go back to see Ruth again and have her talk to us about the people and the events in that book.

Heart-filled Service in Corazon
The biggest event during the year is our trip to Corazon, Mexico where we build homes for needy people. It is a three-day trip and we construct the building in a single day of hard work. Students from all the grades go with us.

One of the best things that happens is the opportunity these trips afford to develop relationships with the family we are serving. The family always gets very involved helping us with nailing, sawing wood, and painting. Last year we didn’t build a home but added a room that would become the bedroom for three teenage girls. I was the only one who could speak Spanish, but all of us had fun with those girls. They would play music and spontaneously begin dancing. We would lay down our hammers and paintbrushes for a few moments and dance together with them. I laughed so hard when my friend, Jakahn, started dancing with those girls. For some reason it was an unforgettably funny moment. The three girls and the other family members helped us paint and hammer as we worked on their home. The day we left, the girls kept saying, “Don’t leave!” They wanted us to stay. In one day they had become our friends.

Working on these projects causes important changes to take place in the thinking of all the participants. It gives people a different perspective than they had previously. For example, the students learn that there are cities and technology in Mexico. More importantly, they learn that the face of Mexican poverty is often wearing a smile.

One of the great lessons learned in Corazon is how stable these poor families often are. We imagine that because of their poverty they must also be dysfunctional. We were all impressed with what an incredibly strong nuclear unit existed within the family we were serving. The members of the family help each other out. They are clearly not content with their poverty, but the father, mother, and children all have the attitude that as long as you have your family you will be fine, whether you live in a mansion or a hut.

The Corazon trips are particularly special for me, of course, because in an important sense, I’m helping my people. I feel blessed to have a stable life in America. When I go on these projects to Mexico, I’m giving back from the gifts that have been given to me. I’m not simply running away from poverty.

We all come to appreciate how life can be lived away from the commodities and luxuries that we take for granted. Most of the participants end up looking back on the experience and saying, “I’ve never been so grateful.” The service becomes a humbling activity for us all. We return to Brentwood with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that is somehow more profound than any of us can get from things like buying a new CD player or spending a weekend in Monterey. Corazon changes our lives. Who knows how different our lives might be 20 years from now because we worked one day on a housing project in Mexico this year?

Providing Relief for Disaster Victims
Last year during the Asia Tsunami, and this year during the Katrina crises, our Interact Club sponsored coin drives for disaster relief. Amanda, Whitney, and Julie worked especially hard with the coin drive. We started by putting up announcements all over the school, “Coming up!” and “See what’s coming to your classrooms.” We converted Tupperware containers into coin cans that we distributed in classrooms and administrative offices. We made presentations to classes encouraging students to participate.

The success or failure of the project in each room was ultimately due to the involvement, or lack of involvement, by the teacher. In one classroom we might collect a quarter; in the next one we would collect hundreds of dollars. The Leadership Class helped with the Katrina Project. They gave us a lot of help in counting money, which turned out to be a big job since we hand counted every single penny. Jen Watson, who is the Student Account Manager for the school, placed our daily collections into a safe. She kept telling us, “My safe is full; you have to count.” Between the tsunami and Katrina relief projects we raised more than nine thousand dollars!

We made a little contest out of the coin drive this year and announced that the classroom who collected the most money would get pizza. Some of the classes worked really hard for that pizza. Mr. Taylor, a history teacher, collected enough in two periods to tie for top position with Mr. Kenelly who collected in four periods. Mr. Taylor once got over two hundred dollars from one classroom session. Mr. Kenelly went over the top at the end only because some wonderful person stuffed a five hundred dollar check into the “coin” box, so we declared a tie and gave pizza to both classrooms.

Gliding into Service
Five times this year we will crawl out of bed before six o’clock on Saturday morning in order to catch the 7:37 BART out of Pittsburg so we can go to San Francisco and serve food to the homeless people at Glide Memorial Church. This is always a very interesting experience. It forces us to get next to people whom we wouldn’t ordinarily associate with. Belen Sidhu, president of Power of Unity, gathered the Leadership Class and members of the Power of Unity Club for the event. She’s a sparkplug!

We begin by working together in a production line to assemble 600 brown bag lunches. We put a meat sandwich, peanut butter sandwich, a cookie and a piece of candy in each lunch. That’s more food than many of the kids have handled at one time before in their lives.

After the sandwiches are prepared, we help serve a hot lunch to the homeless people who gather at Glide. The first time they do this all the students are surprised by the diversity of poor people in San Francisco; they have all kinds of issues. Some of the people we serve behave rudely. Others are kind and very appreciative of the service that we are providing.

One guy showed up really drunk and loudly announced, “Sometimes my baby loves me, sometimes she doesn’t” One of our girls asked him, “Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that you are drunk at 11:30 in the morning?” We all really laughed at that. Some of the people are not homeless. They are clean and sober and are trying to get their lives back on track. Others haven’t bathed for weeks. Some are mentally ill and carry on conversations with invisible friends. Some of them are families with babies.

A few of the poor people come to these things with a collection of possessions and they begin pulling out their Tupperware and simply packing stuff away. Also, they begin trading food with each other. They have a whole barter system going on.

The facility served salmon one time when I was there. I was amazed to learn that some of these ragged people are finicky eaters. It turned out that they are apparently a mostly meat-and-potatoes crowd and many of them didn’t like the salmon.

Two elderly homeless women were especially annoying. They kept pushing people around, demanding that they be given this or that, and displaying some kind of sense of entitlement as though they had done something to deserve the service that people were giving them out of the kindness of their hearts. Some of the guys were almost as bad. Only the women and children get milk, for example, but I’ve seen guys bang on the table and say in a loud, demanding voice, “I want milk!”

The experience is sometimes a little scary. The walk from the BART Powell Avenue Station, for example, passes through some of the most seedy parts of the City. One time a pimp asked one of our girls if she wanted to work for him. We serve mostly older men so it can be pretty uncomfortable. One guy once said something really offensive to a girl. Jeff alerted security who took his picture and then banned him for three weeks from the facility.

All that scary uncomfortable stuff doesn’t really amount to much. Anyway, it is a good thing once in a while to face up to your fears and to put yourself, for a couple of hours, into an uncomfortable situation. On the other hand, the kids are mostly having a great time while they perform this service. I can see by the expressions on their faces that they are enjoying the experience. There is a lot of laughter. Time goes fast for all of us.

Our attitude is that we’re just there to help whether or not the people appreciate our service. We’re satisfied that they were able to get a hot meal, and that we were able to make a difference, however small, in the lives of these desperate people. The most important fact is that we showed up and provided help to people who really needed our help. The Glide Memorial Church experience is always rewarding for everyone who attends.

Because we are a very active club, we started getting a reputation on campus. The Power of Unity Club heard about our Glide activities and wanted to go with us. The Leadership Class joined us as well. Kids from the Heritage Interact Club have also begun to come with us on our Glide trips.

Paying Forward the Blessings I Have Received
It was natural for me to become so heavily involved in community service because of the influence of my parents. In Mexico my dad was involved in medical technology supplying equipment for hospitals. I remember that dad became especially involved with a project to repair a machine designed to cure some type of childhood cancer. I got to help with some of the fundraising events associated with that project. My dad taught me by example to give back in community service from the abundance that we receive ourselves. I thought it was wonderful that he had a job where he could really be of service to society.

My mom, also, is a generous person who always gives of herself to anyone with a need. I caught the value of service by watching my parents help others. My family was never wealthy, but it seemed that we belong to a large sub-culture of people who don’t have much but leap to the assistance of others who have even less.

I’m planning to pursue the passions that my family and the Interact Club have aroused in my heart. I intend to make a career out of serving others.

I’m hoping to be able to attend USC next year and eventually to earn a bachelors degree in International Relations. My big dream is to get a position of some kind at the United Nations where I could become a spokesperson for some country, helping them to work through whatever problems they have. I would also like to work for some nonprofit organization. Both of these cases would enable me to continue giving back to others the gifts that God has given to me. I intend to make a career out of doing what I love to do.

I love to travel and learn about different cultures. I’m in my fourth year of French and would love to study languages. It will be very interesting to see where the pathway of my life eventually leads me. I expect it to be a wonderful adventure!

Like every teenager I have questions about religion. But, past all the confusion and searching, I’ve always believed that if I put myself into the hands of God, He will take me and do something good through me in this world. Even in hard moments and in difficult situations, I have a solid conviction that things will be fine. I’ve been in some tense and dramatic situations and my parents are always surprised at how I manage to keep my calm. Part of that calm spirit might be a character trait, but some of it comes from my settled belief that God is working everything out. So I look for the positive side of every situation.

I’m grateful for my life and for the opportunities I have been given. I’m able to live in two different worlds and can take advantage of both of them. I will continue to try to exert a positive influence on others – beginning with my family, my little brother, the kids at school, my Interact companions, and the people I touch through service.

I’m also grateful to Jeff Shultz for his encouragement and to the Brentwood Rotary Club for investing so many resources in fanning the flames of my desire to spend my life in the service of others. So many people have influenced me in good ways! I’m determined to pay that forward.