Getting Involved, Giving Back- A College Student's Perspective

When I first got involved with Outreach to Haiti, it was really quite by accident. My church, St. Patrick’s in Farmington CT, wanted me to choose a church ministry to work with for service hours in order to get confirmed. Looking at all the options I had to choose from, I had no idea where to start.

One of the groups though, our Haitian ministry, struck my eye for some reason that I never could explain. My first event with the ministry was a fundraiser at the yearly bazaar; I was given the task of manning a crafts booth to sell some items that came straight from Haiti. I loved the group I worked with, as well as the people I met through working with the ministry.

I had the opportunity to do a number of different things, except for one important one. Every year, and often more than once per year, our church would send a group of people down to Haiti for many different reasons, from running clinics to collecting crafts to getting immersed in Haitian culture. While they made this trip often, I found that students and young adults had not had the chance to go.

Thus, that was the mission I took upon myself to organize. After two years of planning and collaboration, I was officially going to Haiti with some of my friends and fellow students. What I experienced can never be put into words, an emotion I find that everyone who has gone to Haiti shares. And yet I have never made a better decision in my life than the one I made one Sunday afternoon, picking Outreach to Haiti’s name out of a pile for confirmation hours. Maybe it was sheer coincidence that led me to get involved in a group that literally changed my life. Then again, maybe it was not.

-Conor Brooks, age 19,  Farmington CT