Today many teenagers all over the world, including myself, participate in Community Service as a way to give back to their community. For the past seven years, my family and I have played a major role in the St. Baldricks Foundation. St. Baldricks is a non-profit organization that fights for childhood cancer. At the event, people shave their heads for solidarity to children who loose their hair during chemotherapy. People also donate money to the charity for cancer research. I first started volunteering fro St. Baldricks when I was eight years old and I’ve been doing it every year since. I look forward to this day every year, because it is a lot of fun and it also lets me meet many new people.

I started doing this event for many reasons. In 2009, my close family friend had been offered to run a St. Baldricks event at a restaurant. He needed volunteers and we were so excited that we were given the chance to help. Another reason that I became involved is because I love to help people. Whether it’s helping my little sister with homework or helping my friends with problems, I love to support and help anyone who needs it. This quality I posses made me strive to do the best that I could do while volunteering. I wanted to raise the most money and get the most people to shave their heads. Everything that we raise over the course of six hours goes to research for cancer. Every minute of research is closer to finding a cure. When people shave their heads it also makes cancer patients who have lost their hair feel like they’re not alone. It brings the community together and shows the sympathy that people have for them. In January of this year, my uncle was diagnosed with lymphoma. He is the first person in my life to have been affected by this terrible disease. Now that an important person in my life is struggling with cancer, I can relate to the families who have been through the same we are going through. This makes St. Baldricks now personal to me and I am even more driven to raise money and help in every way I can for this charity.

Every year while doing this event, I experience heart touching moments that will stay with me forever. Over the course of one day hundreds of people shave their heads, most of them being male. One year while working the registration table, a young girl and her father approached me. The little girl was about seven years old and she had long, beautiful red hair. She had the biggest smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye as she told me she was here to get her head shaved too. This touched me in ways words can’t even describe. A young girl was willing to shave off all her hair and risk being judged by others just to show children with cancer that they’re not alone. Even after getting all her hair shaved off and looking in the mirror at her bald head, she still had the biggest smile on her face. At St. Balricks, there are many different ways to show how cancer has touched people’s lives in one way or another. Around the restaurant that this event is held, there are large pictures of children who have or have had cancer. Each child who has passed away, has a little white paper angel on the top right corner of the picture. Unfortunately, each year more and more angels are added to the pictures. People who didn’t have them the year before have them now. It’s heart-wrenching to see how many children pass away from cancer each year. Anyone ranging from a week old to eighteen years old can be affected with cancer. Doing this event taught me to never take anything for granted. Always appreciate your family, friends, and the things you have because at any moment everything could change.  

St. Baldricks is an amazing charity to volunteer for. I look forward to this day every year. It’s most definitely not a sad and depressing day, rather a day to celebrate the lives of people who lost their battle to cancer and to fight for a cure for people who still suffer from it. Over the past seven years, St. Baldricks has taught me many valuable life lessons and made me look at life in a completely different way. Participating also makes me feel great because I know that I contributed to finding a cure for cancer.