Leaving a Piece of Me
Denia Adennisa Mursalim–INA KL-YES to USA YP 23/24
It was around the end of August of 2023, or September, I couldn’t recall. It was me, my host-sister Kelly, my host-mom, and our dog Suri, we were sitting on the porch of our house, like how we’ve done it a million times.
I’ve always loved sitting there, I got to see dogs playing at the park and talk to our neighbors. What happened that time in particular though, it was different. It wasn’t just a fun quality time with your family, it was a start of something. Kelly mentioned how Boston (Kelly’s granddaughter) felt bad for the kids who got no water bottles at her elementary school, since you can only buy water at lunch and they replaced water fountains with water dispensers.
Hearing that, we all felt sad. I thought of this program, how we were encouraged to participate in volunteering, the sole purpose of that is to make you engage, to help, to make your exchange year meaningful. So that’s exactly what I did. I thought if we could open a donation for water bottles then we can help those kids, not only in Boston’s school, but in the whole County. Kelly and mom immediately agreed. Not to brag or anything, but I’m actually convinced I got the best host-family ever. They are just so supportive, my mom’s husband was a part of the US Military, he was a Pilot.
That gave them the chance to see the world, they went to China, Thailand, Africa, and Indonesia too. One of the stories she told was how she often volunteered to help children in Africa, and she thought it was funny how I was doing the same thing she did back then.
We call it the Water Bottle project. I made the poster digitally by myself, telling them what we need and where to give it to, mom shared it to the subdivision’s Facebook Page and I wrote the caption, briefly telling them about myself and the problem. At the front porch, we left a basket with the poster stuck to it. It got a lot of attention and in a few days, we saw our first water bottle. On the other hand, Kelly called some stores and asked if they were interested in donating, and their answers were always yes. It was like Christmas every time we checked the basket outside. Before we knew it, we had a few boxes of water bottles.
The next step was to distribute them, so Kelly got in touch with the local elementary schools asking if we could donate our water bottles, and most of them were more than happy to let us. The schools would gather the data of the students who don’t have a water bottle, usually around 40 kids. We would go deliver the water bottles when the school was closed. Two of the schools we went to were Johnson Elementary School and Franklin Elementary School.
I felt rewarded, I felt like I was doing something meaningful. Every Time I was giving those water bottles away, I felt relieved and felt some kind of excitement, of how when I leave at the end of the program, these water bottles are still with them. This is probably my favorite part about being an exchange student, the part where I could leave positive impacts to the people around me.
