Nya Lony, Guest Column

It’s been said that one of the most challenging aspects of human nature is selflessness. I also believe that it is one of the most rewarding. The feeling of giving — giving service, giving advice, giving anything — is unrivaled.

Giving can be categorized into giving materials and giving time. I’m not belittling the former, but I think giving time is the most precious. It’s easy to write a check and forget about it, but when you spend time getting to know faces and the names of people and places, you don’t forget.

In June I had the opportunity to volunteer my time through a program called Students Today Leaders Forever, or STLF. STLF started out as an idea stemming from a late-night conversation among four freshmen at the University of Minnesota. Their mission was to find a way for young people to make an impact, in communities and on themselves.

Students Today Leaders Forever is a student-run, nonprofit organization that recruits college, high school and middle school students to reach out and make a difference in their communities and communities across the country through service.

STLF has three main avenues for carrying out its mission. The first is the Pay It Forward Tour, in which I participated. The PIF Tour engages students in a traveling experience focusing on leadership, service and reflection. The other two are the High School Leadership Camp and the Forward Impact which focus on developing leadership qualities and the commitment to service.

My PIF trip started on June 15. There were 47 of us and the only person I knew was my friend Martha. We were all going to be spending the next week together traveling and volunteering in four cities: La Crosse, Madison, Rockford and Chicago.

The first service project we did was the Hunger Garden in La Crosse, Wis. The Hunger Garden was started by a nonprofit group called the Hunger Task Force. They assist local food shelves by providing fresh, organic produce for people in need. Last year, the Hunger Garden was able to produce more than 32,000 pounds of fresh produce. Our job was to help lay down mulch under tomato plants and turn over compost piles. It doesn’t sound like much, but the garden was huge. A job that would have taken the workers weeks to do, we accomplished in a matter of hours.

The next two service projects were at nursing homes. The first one was at St. Mary’s Care Center in Madison, Wis. My favorite part was taking the residents for a walk. There was one woman in particular, Era, who hadn’t been outside since last fall. Later, we browsed gardening magazines and watched a 25th anniversary VHS tape of a big band jazz group. I truly enjoyed spending time with her and if I could go back and visit, I would.

Another one of our service projects was in Chicago, Ill. We volunteered at the Lincoln Park Community Shelter. The whole process was chaotic, but fun. Making sure all 47 students got a chance to cook was a struggle. I think I cut carrots for the stir-fry. The rest of my time was spent getting to know residents.

There was one woman, Constance, who left an impression on me. I’d never met her before in my life, but she hugged me as though she were my grandmother. She thanked me and all of the STLF volunteers for coming. Later, she pulled me and Martha aside and asked us if we were Sudanese. I was surprised that she knew, but all she said was, “I could never mistake my children from the Motherland.”

The service projects were just one part of the STLF experience. The other part was the reflection on what we did, what kind of effect it has, and how it relates to bigger issues. We usually had large group discussions. Once, we split up into small groups and each group sat in the dark in a different section of the church at which we were staying. The topic for that discussion was poverty and privilege. It was an interesting topic for many reasons. One reason being that most of the people we helped lived in poverty, giving us the position of privilege. The discussion branched out as far as education, gender, race and stereotypes and how all of that plays into the struggle between poverty and privilege.

I’ve never had such an intense and enlightening conversation with a group of my peers. I had even more respect for all of them, even those who I didn’t agree with.

Leadership is one of the core values of STLF. I always considered myself the leader type, but it was more of a state of mind. My STLF experience gave me the confidence to be a leader. I was asked to speak at the celebration, which is when all the PIF tours gather in one city. Normally I would have found an excuse to get out of it. Talking in front of groups of people has always been an awkward experience for me. It gets really hot, my voice reaches a level that only dogs can hear and I forget how to breathe. That time was different; I accepted enthusiastically. Leon Lee, another student who was asked to speak, and I went up in front of more than 100 people. I was able to express my STLF experience and how it affected me without any of the awkwardness. That was just one of many changes I saw within myself.

The trip ended on June 19. Getting off the bus was a surprisingly emotional experience. I was saying goodbye, not to 45 strangers, but to 45 new best friends. Spending a week on a bus and making a difference really brings people together.

Since its conception on Sept. 18, 2003, the brainchild of those four students has a total of 220 Pay It Forward Tours completed, 106,000 hours of service and has had 8,582 participants. I’m proud to say that I was a part of STLF. It was an amazing experience. The people I met, the changes I made and the growth I saw in myself was huge. Nothing would make me happier than to be able to make a Forward Impact and give students in Albert Lea the opportunity to have an amazing STLF experience.

Nya Lony will be a senior this fall at Albert Lea High School where she is the editor of the student newspaper, the AhLaHaSa.