Explorers

After spending summers in Ecuador and Paraguay as a high school and college student, I recognized the tremendous developmental benefits of not just learning but living other cultures, concepts, and contexts. I realized early the lack of humility in most charity (reactive) or philanthropy (strategic) and with inspired guidance from a youth leadership development program moved to examine local resources and empower sustainable, community-driven change.

In medical school, I saw how health disparities mirrored disparities in educational and economic opportunity, and I realized how my privileged participation in a program that took me twice to South America was not available to most students. My first thought was to start a scholarship that would support students who were economically disadvantaged to participate in the experience that was so formative for me. But ultimately, I felt this was a bandaid for an unjust circumstance, and I was looking for a cure.

As the Greater Houston area, including suburbs like Pearland, have changed demographically, the cure has become so obvious to me. It is not to uplift programs that further privilege the privileged (see email in image below) but to take advantage of the rich opportunity to build community across the various perceived divides right where we live - a deeply worthy endeavor that is accessible to all.

Pearland ISD could take meaningful action on cross-cultural exchange within the boundaries of our district - where we could not only share our cuisine, traditional dress, languages, and customs but also the challenges we face as recent immigrants in an indisputably anti-immigrant moment. As we resist celebrating difference only insofar as we are tickled by the novelty, as we get real about deep interest for whole human beings and not just their curious cultural practices, we will invariably discover, with profound compassion, that we are much more the same than we are different.