My name is Shane and I'm a freshman at Leland Stanford Junior University. I'm from the great city of Toledo, OH, but the California sunshine has made it easy to call Stanford home. I'm always up for an adventure, and biking across America this summer for FACE AIDS will definitely be my best journey yet.
Through my high school years at St. John's Jesuit, I was deeply connected to service work. Service was a duty, and over my four years at St. John's it was instilled within my daily actions. With my high school, I traveled to the Appalachia region to do community outreach work my sophomore year, and during my junior year I embarked on a three weeklong service trip to Guatemala City, Guatemala. As an Indian American, I have a deep respect for my heritage, and in addition to my service work at my high school, I have traveled to India for the last three years and worked as a computer teacher at a local elementary school. My work thus far has been centered on working for change: I built homes in West Virginia, I played soccer with Children in Guatemala, and I put together computer labs in India. However, this summer, I am thrilled to join the FACE AIDS team because I will, for the first time, be engaged in justice work.
Justice work entails stopping a problem indirectly, and working to end its source, and this summer, over 67 days, I will try to bring home the desperate call of HIV and AIDS afflicted Rwandans. Each town and state will carry different faces, different personalities, and I am interested to see how our country responds to the plight of the African people. With minute donations we can drastically change the life of a Aids inflicted Rwandan, and I hope to be apart of this change.
A week after my freshmen rowing season at Stanford University ends, I will get on a bike and travel across our great land. From sea to shinning sea, I will have the opportunity to breath in the great American landscape. To say that I am a little excited, seems like a vast understatement.