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In an effort to help our scholarship review committee(s) begin to understand who you are, please respond to the following essay question. Suggested minimum length is 500 words.
Please share how the household, neighborhood or community in which you were raised has influenced the person you are today, especially in relation to the scholarship(s) for which you are applying. Please see scholarship description(s) above to help guide your response.
• Diversity Leadership Scholarship - Open to prospective students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents from broadly diverse backgrounds. • Sustainability …show more content…
I can remember spending countless Saturday afternoons cruising with my family through Kruger National Park on adventurous and indescribable Safaris. We once witnessed the extreme power and protective nature of a dark grey mother elephant who was just a few feet away from stomping and crushing our family van. It was such a joy to wake up as a young child early in the morning on a game reserve and find a family of brown warthogs, speckled with white colored whiskers, grazing below the deck. Having been privileged to see such incredible, vibrant wildlife roaming freely and lost in the beauty of the world, I feel as if there’s no way I myself could be in captivity. And I won’t be. I want to smell the fresh green grass where water buffalo graze! I want to splash in the crystal-clear water where mud-encrusted hippopotami bathe their sun-kissed bodies! I so desperately want to witness the beauty of newborn life and watch as a mother gorilla nourishes her newborn son.The elephants, the radiant toucans, and the orange and brown spotted giraffes beckon me to their homes The last sounds I want to hear each night as I crawl into bed are the olive-colored crickets clickity clacking and the chubby frogs bellowing with each gulp they take. There is no doubt that animals are my passion, but since relocating to the United States, it has frustrated me to see so many people crying out over the injustices of hunted animals and the corruption of poachers, when this nation has desensitized itself to the burdens of war/crime, poverty, and disease overseas. Having grown up in South Africa and been given a second chance at life through the Door of Hope orphanage, I know that everyone, including poachers, has a story and many of them just need someone to listen. Not all poachers are evil and corrupt, many of them are just uneducated and trying to provide for their