Statement of Purpose: Explain Any Extenuating Circumstances That You Feel Could Add Value to Your Application. You May Also Want to Explain Unique Aspects of Your Academic Background or Valued Experiences You May Have Had That Relate to Your Academic Disc

To Help Them

One afternoon, I drove my car in Jakarta, a city in which I live for seventeen years. In the sea of luxurious cars, I saw three year olds begging for some change, and people selling magazines and drinks. I even saw people living on the streets. Then, I pass the dumpsite. Despite the awful smell, I saw people searching in the trash for plastic bottles, cans, or anything that can be sold to the recycling center. It was around five when I went near the factories, and I saw thousands of workers going home. As usual, I found one or two, or more, crying silently in desperation because they are being laid off that day. That is Jakarta, a city with two faces. When one face show the sky crappers and pretty lights, the other face shows a home built inside the dumpsite. In Jakarta, one can encounter poverty easily; half of the Jakarta residents live in poverty. These encounters helped me in deciding what I want to be.

I volunteered to teach English in a school based in Pulo Gadung. It is an industrial area with lot of factories. Thus, the students are mostly the children of the factory workers. On the first day, I was shocked to see the conditions that these students were living in. They lived beside a river that is clogged by trash dumped by the factory. You can imagine how terrible this place smells. You could not see clearly because the air is being polluted by the factories' smoke. The air pollution also made my skin itch. The factory machines produce very loud noises. It is a very unhealthy environment to live in. Despite all that, the students and the teacher of the school welcome me with a warm smile. I was touched.

The students' skin looked dirty, and if you touched it, it felt sticky. Their hair smelled bad; maybe it was because they had not washed their hair for quite a long time. But, what caught my attention the most was that the students were very skinny; you could see their collar bones clearly and even their ribs under their school uniforms. They got tired easily. They also looked smaller than other kids their age. I thought, maybe they had some kind of malnutrition. Some of the students told me that they had brothers and/or sisters who could not go to school. That is because they have a bloated stomach, loose skin or hair that looks like the corn silk, and they do not have enough energy to move. Those are the physical characteristics of people with severe malnutrition.

On that first day, there was one student crying. She cried because her stomach hurt very badly. It had been days since the last time she ate. She said that her father was sick and could not go to work. Because the father was only paid for the days he worked, they could not afford any food. The teacher said that it was not something unusual there. It was sad seeing these wonderful children malnourished just because they and their parents could not afford any foods.

On other days when I went to do my volunteer work the students sometimes asked me to meet their families. What I saw there shocked me even more. In one family, I saw a mother giving her children their lunch. For lunch, they had rice, flour chips, and sweet soy sauce. That means carbohydrates, a very little bit of protein, no vitamins and no minerals. Afraid to offend them, I asked them carefully why they did not have any vegetables or tofu for their meal. Their answer was, "They are expensive. What is the difference anyways?" Not long after that, the father came home and he was smoking a cigarette. I thought to myself, the money they could used to buy an egg, tofu, or anything healthy was spent for a cigarette that was damaging their lung. In another family, I saw kids begging their mom for a pack of Cheetos. The mother said yes and went to a market nearby to buy one for all