Gates Millennium Scholarship Essay Example on Community Involvement

Discuss your involvement in and contributions to a community near your home, school or elsewhere. Please select an experience different from the one you discussed in the previous question, even if this experience also involved leadership. What did you accomplish? How did this experience influence your goals?

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), my country of birth, Morocco, ranks in the bottom 10% for literacy amongst all nations in the world. The problem is particularly acute amongst women, due to ingrained cultural practices and prejudices. My mother who is a teacher and also very much an independent thinker, wanted to provide me with the opportunity at a very young age to make a meaningful impact to the lives of the illiterate in our country. On alternate weekends she drove us to the country and I helped teach women and girls how to read and write Arabic. All we had was a small classroom and a chalk board where the women sat on the ground and attended class often at great personal risk to themselves. So intense was their desire to learn. Education was the only way out of their very difficult circumstances in life. Their courage, despite possible harm from their husbands and family, impacted me deeply. I too realized at that early age that education was my way out of my own circumstances in life; thus my drive to attend high school and college here in the US.

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