By Zaynab Abubakar (YES 2018-2019, Nigeria, hosted by ACES in Redding, California)

Its true that what we learn during the hours of our best times will forever live with us till eternity. Deciding whether or not we want that legacy to follow on after us begins with what we do now! The road to achieving success is not bound to be easy but humanity should always be our prior concern first.

My name is Zaynab Abubakar and I was on the Kennedy Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program for the 2018 – 2019 school year. I’m currently an alumna of the YES Program and I am more willing and committed to giving back all that I’ve learned in the U.S. to my community. I was hosted in Redding, California where I received a first-hand experience of what it meant to ‘volunteer’ in one's community. There are a lot of community service projects that I’ve done in the United States that I’d like to implement back here in my country. I sought out help from past alums to guide me on how I can go ahead with my first project and I was advised to start small because that would enable me to tackle each problem carefully and wisely.

Going back to my volunteering experiences while I was in the U.S., I remembered helping my host mom grade assignments for an elementary school in the community. This made me realize that my first community service project could even be at a school. So I went to a nearby primary school called First Step International School which was two minutes away from my home to ask for permission if I could help the teachers grade the pupil’s assignments and also spend some quality time with the kids. Luckily for me it was their Continuous Assessment (CA) test week so I was given the responsibility of grading and recording their test papers instead.

I started my volunteer work on the June 25th and finished on the 26th. It was actually fun being a mentor for the kids and a helper for the school. It was my first time acting as a substitute for a school and my jobs consisted of passing out exam questions, grading and recording test papers and most importantly getting to know the kids. The kids were so happy to have a new face in their classroom and I got to know their names, some of their interests which were mostly in the arts and I also took selfies with them. On the second day when I was about to go home, I got a lovely short message from the kids I had been with saying “We love you” and that made me really emotional because they made my entire volunteer service more fun, interesting and educating. 

I’m so happy that I chose this to be my first community project because it really brought out something good in me and that is my ability to communicate and relate well with people of all ages. Now this will be a pathway for me to be a part of my community and contribute my quota in making a great change!