yaSHASVI  BAJAJ

BS Psychology 
Guiliano Fellow, Fall 2020 

“Empowering myself to empower those around me”

As a Guiliano Fellow, I travelled to the City Mission of Schenectady. City Mission is a nonprofit organization focused on poverty alleviation and economic empowerment for under-resourced communities. There, I completed a week-long volunteering project to learn more about how I could help people in need, as well as how I could directly impact their lives. I lived in a comparatively sheltered part of Schenectady, NY during my early teenage years; I wanted to broaden my horizons. The Guiliano Fellowship gave me the opportunity to do so, as well as embrace a dedicated, service-oriented team of staff and fellow volunteers. Where the only goal was to give back to people in need, the chance to make a difference could not be ignored.

During my stay, I chose to help with kitchen and meal prep, service, and cleanup for both the lunch and dinner shifts. This totalled about five hours over the course of a day. I learned that City Mission does not receive government funding, so supplying fresh goods, as well as preparing and distributing basic needs would not be possible without the support of other organizations and individuals. After interacting with the team, I made another observation: there are good human beings in this world who do selfless things simply because they believe in them. There can be unfavorable circumstances to deal with, like the insult of a global pandemic. There can be the emotional and mental toll that dealing with the pandemic has on an individual. All of that does not seem to take precedent in the grand scheme of things. It does not stop good people from staying true to their morals. That is why I have developed great respect for these people. I aspire to maintain the same commitment to my own morals, nurturing them as I get older.  

As a high schooler, I remember being told about the ‘bad,’ ‘shady,’ and ‘sketchy’ people from the downtown area. I am now able to see that misunderstanding, or rather, a lack of willingness to understand, leads people to make presumptions about others. I have very little patience for people that ultimately refuse to acknowledge others’ situations from an unprivileged lens. I believe that many of us could then educate ourselves to be better citizens. To be more aware of how we can make a difference on a larger scale, instead of relying on the ‘future generation’ to solve our very present problems. Before casting unbridled judgement upon so many people, we should also try to appreciate where they are coming from. We have to stop and think; what must they have been going through? One has to consider the exacerbated difficulties our current environment must have posed to dozens of families that already struggled to access basic necessities every single day. As I served these families on the food line, I saw only kindness and humility in their eyes. They were no stranger to their situation, but that did not make them any less of a human being. 

As someone who had an opportunity to help, I cannot describe the overwhelming feeling of doing good for someone other than myself. I experienced this feeling upon every meal I prepared and packaged, even knowing that my impact was relatively miniscule. I became intensely motivated to use this experience as a catalyst to drive more influential change of my own, as a global citizen. 

I began reading up on the work of renowned social work scholars and nobel laureates, particularly Muhammad Yunus’ “Creating a World Without Poverty” and “Building Social Business.” I started getting out of my comfort zone and having Zoom coffee with experienced professionals, many of whom had built social businesses and sizable followings centered around helping others in multidisciplinary fields. 

I intend to amass the learning in this educational phase towards something more, and I am thankful to my supportive colleagues and friends who already wish to participate. I encourage anyone else who feels a need to do the same. The Guiliano Fellowship allowed me to get out of my comfort zone, and I would recommend applying to anyone who wishes to embark upon a transformative journey of self-realization.

GRADUATE STUDENT APPLICATION INFORMATION  

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT APPLICATION INFORMATION 

Application Deadlines: 

Fall deadline: October 1  (Projects will take place during the Winter Session or spring semester)

Spring deadline: March 1 (Projects will take place during the Summer Session or fall semester)

Please submit any questions here.