Lillie Award

Food is comforting. Spending 17 years enjoying flavorful home-cooked meals has led me to become accustomed to the convenience of consumption. However, the real world is vastly different, and rarely can people so richly satisfy their appetites. This is a notion that I have come to realize through my experiences volunteering locally at the nonprofit organization, Feed My Starving Children. For two years, I devoted one weekend each semester to preparing food packs that reach children around the world. Initially, sealing spoonfuls of soy powder and dehydrated potatoes for children confused me - didn’t their markets offer these types of essential foods? What do they eat normally? What made the packs so exciting to receive? My questions were answered through videos shown of these packages being delivered: immeasurable joy and relief shone on their faces. Even amongst a metropolitan backdrop, it was clear that these children were largely orphaned, a sidelined minority facing resource insufficiency. Without these packs of grain, many would run the risk of starvation. For most of them, access to food became their source of hope. The childrens’ endurance despite food shortages opened my eyes to the stark differences in accessibility - a global disparity that not only reminds me to appreciate what I have but also to strive for practical solutions. Participating in local projects to contribute internationally reveals new understandings that reflect the world beyond a typical classroom. In particular, it facilitates exposure to underrepresented inequities such as unequal resource distribution, an issue that I am truly interested in. My passion for public service stems partly from my experiences as a food packing volunteer, but more so from the influential work of the humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders. Their steadfast dedication to providing accessible healthcare to people living in the most remote corners of the world mirrors my desire to confront unequal resource distribution for children as food and healthcare are both essential services. In fact, recent studies indicate that nearly 17 million children in the U.S. were food insecure in 2020, greatly exacerbated by COVID-19 restrictions. As an aspiring physician, my mission is to serve others. My education in medicine will prepare me to treat wounds, ensure sanitation, and heal illnesses - important skills that have real-world applications. Specifically, I aim to establish an organization that provides food and healthcare services for underprivileged children without expecting anything in return. Just as I have been blessed to experience filling meals and abundant healthcare, I will strive to share these joys and work to integrate basic comforts into the lives of children worldwide.