Community Service/Volunteering: Local vs. International

Applying to College
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<p>I was looking through some old threads where people were discussing the type of volunteering that involve trips to foreign countries and working there. Many people expressed that it is better to help out in your own community than to, for example, head on a plane to Honduras and build houses.</p>

<p>However, this lead me to think a bit about one of the projects that I am beginning to plan. If the explanation gets too long, please feel free to skim through.</p>

<p>There's an entirely volunteer-run organization called the North South Foundation that provides a great number of merit-based scholarships to needy yet brilliant students in India who would otherwise not be able to attend college. (I feel quite strongly about this cause because I firmly believe that education is one of the most important steps to eliminate poverty at its roots.) This foundation raises most of their money in the U.S.; a good deal of contribution comes from the educational contests (spelling bees, vocabulary and math contests, essay contests, etc.) that they hold here. In order to run the competitions, they have numerous chapters around the country, one of which is in my city. This is the 2-3 year that we have had a chapter, and as of yet, there is no youth board/group/committee. </p>

<p>I want to start a youth group for our chapter to help with tasks such as fundraising for the scholarships. Another goal of mine is to develop connections between that group and our very active Key Club. These are just the beginning goals; I'll see later on what other ways I can help the cause.</p>

<p>My question to all of you venerable CCers: Does the fact that the tangible fruits of this service project all go to India (as opposed to my local community) take away from its perceived value for adcoms? For me, the people I'm helping belong to my community; I share with them an entire heritage and culture. I'm just not sure whether it appear to others that my head is stuck in idealism and not in the realities of my geographic community.</p>

<p>(Note: Regardless of admissions "value", I will pursue this project. I just want to know the opinions of some experienced people.)</p>

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<p>I don't think it takes anything away; it actually isn't THAT related to what you were first talking about, which seems more to be directed towards people who spend money on plane tickets to go physically volunteer (believing that volunteering IN a foreign country seems more of a wow factor...and thus seeming to just spending money to "buy" a volunteer experience); in your case, you would be raising money, and the same amount of money won't matter where it goes as long as it goes somewhere.
It would be cool if you could do a penpal thing with some of those students in India, that would be very rewarding.</p>

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<p>Thanks, the penpal idea is great!</p>

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<p>I think the difference from international and local is that international means you're rich. Because people sometimes pay lots and lots of $$$ to go to a third-world country and hand out blankets to needy children when giving all that money from airfare to some random charity would probably benefit better. See those ads with "With your two dollars, you could feed one AIDs/HIV stricken child in Africa for three months!". It's essentially paying for the experience of helping people in another country.</p>

<p>I do like the scholarship idea though. I don't think it matters where the money goes as long as it's helping someone who needs it, no matter where they're located. It'd be nice to know the background of the people you helped so instead of saying "the money went to India" you could even make it a topic of discussion during interviews "the money went to __________ who lives in India and wants to persue a major in engineering."</p>

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<p>Thanks your input, guys. Now my question is: what is the "wow factor" value of this project for an admissions officer?</p>