By Felicia Mazzone   August 31, 2010

The reason I want to win these eight experiences are for three major reasons: to share my experiences with others through writing, to connect with other members of Roots & Shoots and to have an experience that I can define my life by because of the immersion in different cultures. Before I say anymore, let me explain a bit about Roots & Shoots. Roots & Shoots is a nonprofit service learning group started by Dr. Jane Goodall (primatologist) in 1991 in Tanzania. The program has now expanded to more than one hundred and ten countries. Through this organization I have been able to attend a conference in Florida where I met other young adults from twenty three of those countries. I have also raised money to build a chimpanzee sanctuary in Tanzania and helped start the first animal sanctuary in Nepal. I have helped on all of these things and more but have never gotten to experience the difference I’ve made except in several pictures. I want to see the difference I have made by actually going to and experiencing the difference my actions and the actions of all of us in the organization have made.
However, I also want to visit people from those twenty three countries so that I can truly understand their culture. I learned a lot about their culture at the conference but they were on U.S. soil and their culture would come alive on their own ground. Cultures of the world are all very different but the people are not. Every person on this Earth is connected to one another in more ways than one. That sense of global community is something we all need to understand because only by working together can we fix the problems of the world such as climate change, poverty and AIDS.
Finally, I would blog about all my experiences because inspirational and truthful stories inspire people. I would tell people about what I learned about every culture and how we can connect as a global community in order to become one nation and solve the world’s problems. My ultimate goal would be to connect with people from other cultures and show people the similarities in hopes that they will gain a new respect for every cultural difference and embrace it to create one singular community, one singular country, one united earth.