My Passion For Helping Children

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The origin of my passion for helping children emanated from my family history. I was born into a low-income family; the eldest daughter of two immigrant parents. My parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic and barely spoke English. Being a young bride, my mother had her first child when she was just fourteen years old, and subsequently, bore four more children. My father worked menial jobs to make ends meet and support the family. Unfortunately, with little education or knowledge of the English language, these jobs yielded meager monetary earnings. He worked as a paper distributor for the New York Post during the night, and Aer Lingus during the day. He regularly returned home after dinner and spent his spare time resting for the …show more content…

Each person has a distinct personality, strengths, weaknesses and goals. I often felt as if I was the black sheep of the family, frequently singled out and labeled “the favorite child,” the reason being that I was the only child that continued to further my education. I was regularly expected to succeed and was often the child my parents would compare each sibling to. Feeling like I did not have anyone to confide in, I started attending a peer-counseling group in middle school. It is here that I discovered that other children had it much worse than I did. We would disclose our feelings, and others would just listen. I started attending these groups twice a week, as they made me feel like I was in the proper place. Thenceforth, I started seeing a school counselor unaccompanied by the other children. I was able to communicate feelings that I could not disclose in the group. I revealed my fears about disappointing my parents, but I also verbalized that I was strong and independent because of them. They may not have been involved for very much of my childhood, but this only fueled my need to succeed and pursue my …show more content…

I worked as a sales associate in the Staten Island Mall in a male clothing store named Epic Designs. Every day after school I would take the city bus to work and leave when the mall closed at 10 P.M. and proceeded to take public transportation back home following a night of homework. Although during that time I would have rather been home relaxing or enjoying the company of friends, being employed at a young age instilled a whole array of positive traits and helped me to develop a broad range of beneficial attributes. Being forced to work at a young age helped me to become more independent from my parents. By using my earnings to pay for my expenses, I’ve learned how to budget and rely only on myself financially. Most children are led to believe they’re entitled to receive; it is essential to teach the value of hard work which is what my parents did. Receiving minimum wage and witnessing my managers work seven days a week for a small hourly rate to support their children, opened up my eyes to what my father was referring to as a job being significantly different in comparison to a

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