What can I do: Go

I don't believe that there is anything that will stir your heart and build your passion for justice and freedom than looking into the eyes of the oppressed and enslaved.

When I was seventeen, the summer before my last year of school, I went with a team of young people to the Philippines for a month. We were going to work with street kids. And how noble that sounded: heroic with a hint of undercover glamour and romanticism.

I had images of the photos I would show to people when I returned - photos of myself surrounded by cute Asian kids as I polished my halo.

I was going to make a difference in the world!

It didn't take me long to realise that the difference was going to be made in me. Driving to Alay Pag-asa, the home for kids rescued from the streets, after a ridiculous number of hours on a plane, the first things I noticed were the noise, the people, the chaos, the smells. Ah, the smells. Most of them, I couldn't identify. Most of them, I didn't want to.

That month was a struggle.

One day is etched in my mind. It was over ten years ago, but I can play the scene as if I just lived it. I can remember the feelings as if they still have a hold on me...

On that day, that oppressively hot day, we followed our guides, people who worked in the Alay Pag-asa to a place where some of these kids hung out. They explained to us that mostly, these kids had run away from home, away from worse situations. The better option for them was to live on the streets.

We first stopped in a beautifully air-conditioned mall to buy them food. The place where they hung out was at the back of the mall, beside an abandoned petrol station. As we walked towards it, they saw us coming and, recognising our guide, began to come to us. They seemed to emerge from everywhere: they came over fences, they appeared from behind walls. And just as I was getting my loving missionary face on...it all changed.

These young boys were, I would guess, between 6 and 16 and they were all wearing clothes that had so many holes in them that they may as well have not been wearung them. We noticed that they would keep ducking their heads under their threadbare shirts and as we got closer, we saw that they were sniffing glue. I remember, so clearly, the looks on their faces when their heads popped back up from their shirts vacant, glassy expressions in their eyes, eyes that looked through us rather than at us. Eyes that have no place on a 9 year old's face.

I knew that I should have felt compassion, I knew that I should have loved them. I knew that's what I was there for. There I was, "working with street kids" and all I wanted to do was get as far away from that place and those kids as I could. I'm not proud of that feeling. And I desperately want to tell you that I overcame it and changed lives that day. But I can't, because, that day... mine was the only life changed.

I think I have seen a swing in how we think about that kind of overseas trip. At that time, it almost seemed like a fashionable thing to do. But I noticed that, as I went through university, there was almost a feeling that it was just a lot of money that could be better spent on sending to the organisations who were already doing the work, there was a feeling that these trips were just glorified holidays, there was a feeling that maybe the trips didn't even do much to help the locals.

And I don't think that mission should be a selfish thing, but I have seen first hand the ripple effect it can have. It may have taken me years, but when I put myself back in that scene, the feelings I feel now are anger that there are not systems to help those kids, pain at knowing that 8 year olds are addicted to drugs and fire to do something about it.

I'm not saying that I have done great works since then. What I am saying is...GO. Get on the plane, go to those places, meet those people, smell those smells and feel the pain that they are feeling.

Because I think that may be one of the best

ways to begin changing the world:

putting yourself in a position where

you first allow the world to change you.