Story

This break I did not go back to China, however I chose to go to Chicago in order to get involved in a program, which called CivicWeek Education. This education created by Northwestern university. I participated into the program's main direction is to discover Human rights and do some research on urban affairs. This was a big challenge for me because human right and urban affairs are not my strength, but due to this challenge, I chose to join in them in order to improve myself. In my  own opinion, I thought that I would meet a lot of problems in the future, how should I solve them? So this program gave me a chance to verify my ability. Also, this spring break is too short, just 17 days, I do not want to live with time difference in these 17 days. Due to the time difference, I have to sleep in the morning and wake at night.
In this program Human Rights & Urban Affairs, I did many meaningful things. For example, I went to Chicago Youth Center to play with kids whose parents did not have time to take care of them. Playing with children was very happy, but tired at the same time. Then I went to LAF, it is a company that helps the poverty to get the benefits. Many lawyers in this company talked to us about their job and what should they do in order to help others. Also we went to a shelter, it accepts all the people who want to stay there, whatever you are homeless or you have not money to rent a house. This agency are happy to help you. The similarity involves in these three agencies is that they are non profit agencies, their purpose is to help others rather than earning money.
Because I joined the program that contains human rights, so everyday we would talk about the influence of human rights. There is one question I think a lot. Does poverty against human rights? Because we talked about human rights, human rights mean liberty, freedom, free speech. However, poverty means homeless, helpless, hopeless. These two words' meanings are opposite. But should they be opposite or could they stay together? This is my problem until I went to a food bank. I went to there, cleaned their garden, cleaned their floor, and also I served food for the homeless people. I noticed one thing during my work time, every homeless person is happy to accept the food and they look neat. So I asked them why they are happy? One man answered me that even though he's homeless now, he had found a job to work. During this time he had no money to rent a house, so that's why he stays here, the reason why he is happy because he thought he had improved his life to become better. He enjoyed to purse his dream everyday. At that time, I figured out that poverty does not against human rights, they should stay to stay together. Human rights protect the poverty and poverty made the sense of human rights. So I thought expect many valuable experience in this program, the similarity between poverty and human rights is the biggest achievement for myself.