Name: Mohammad Musa Wahla
From: Plainsboro Township, NJ
Votes: 2
Too
often are people oblivious to the hardships others experience and
fail to recognize that what they may consider trivial may make a
world’s difference for someone else. Keeping these words in my mind,
I tried my very best as the president of The Help Society to make a
difference in the lives of those around me.
I
founded The Help Society with the goal of collecting funds to help
people from low socioeconomic backgrounds pay for their medical
expenses or, at the very least, get reasonable access to medicines.
We hosted a plethora of bake sales throughout the year and set up
donation boxes across the school to raise money. After months of hard
work and determination, collecting spare change, and encouraging
people to support our cause, we successfully raised over seventeen
thousand USD. A majority of this sum was used to make and distribute
over 400 first aid kits in public schools located in regions of
extreme poverty in Pakistan. We supplemented these kits with lectures
on how to stay healthy and safe from malaria and dengue. It is
important to recognize that the vast majority of the Pakistani
population is deprived of fundamental medical facilities and have
little to no access to public education. It was our goal to educate
the children in these schools of the ways to protect themselves.
In
light of our society’s recent success, our school’s principal
contacted me for assistance. One of the school’s custodians, Shahbaz
Appa, had been misdiagnosed about her reproductive system and was
deathly ill. We were tasked to look into it. After spending over four
futile hours at the local hospital with her, I changed my strategy,
knowing we would never get medical assistance on time, and contacted
a gynecologist I had recently interned with. Dr. Arbilla agreed to
diagnose her immediately, at 12:30 am. We concluded she had an
abnormally large ovarian cyst and needed to undergo surgery right
away. Dr. Arbilla, being extremely kind and generous, scratched the
operation fees and The Help Society paid for her medicines. She
recovered to full health within two weeks and soon returned to her
job.
I
have no doubt in my mind that that tedious evening The Help Society
and I managed to save a precious life. It felt so liberating to put
others’ needs before myself and helping them out. Whether it was
the young and ambitious children I had lectured or the hard working
and honest Shahbaz Appa I had saved, making a difference in their
lives meant the entire world to me. However, what saddens me to this
day is that the problems they encountered are easily preventable and
should definitely not define their future. No one should be in
destitution of healthcare solely because of how much money they make.
I plan on continuing to help my community throughout my life and
ensuring that, at the very least, people aren’t deprived of basic
human rights!
