Drew Descourouez
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Fortunately, airline companies make mistakes. When I was in second grade a flight debacle landed my family and I with enough frequent flier miles to travel to Australia. The rainforest immediately captivated me and the Aboriginal history of Australia was so much more interesting than the modern European design that reminded me of San Francisco. They were nice cities but I could not spend enough time out of doors in this foreign place that felt so comfortable and exciting. The more I learned about Australia the more it seemed that the Aboriginal people had a healthier and more meaningful relationship with the wild, natural parts of the Australia that I adored. This style of partnership helped me look at our own history in the United States and begin to wonder when we lost our way. The protective and deeply relational quality of the indigenous connection to the planet sustained a passion for the environment that I brought home and motivated me to learn more about climate change and deforestation.
In the 5th grade I was convinced I would become an engineer to design green technology and solve our abusive relationship with the planet so I sent some of my observations and car designs to President George W. Bush. The White House mailed me back links for more civic engagement and I brought the letter to my elementary school elections to try and convince people that I would make a great student council secretary. My note taking was sub par but student council was the vehicle the brought Free The Children, the next big love of my life. FTC was founded by Craig Kielburger at the age 12 to fight child labor because he read about Iqbal Masih, also 12, a former child slave murdered by the carpet mafia for speaking out against the industry.
I was amazed and inspired that a young person could dedicate themselves to such an ideal. His example gave me permission to care deeply about the planet, its people, and my relationship to both. I worked for FTC over the next 8 years in various capacities traveling the world with some of my biggest heroes and mentors. FTC was the largest organization of youth helping youth through education to break the cycle of poverty. Their commitment was to freedom, freedom from disease, poverty, exploitation, and thirst, but also freedom from the idea that young people had to grow up before they could make a difference. FTC helped me study my relation to injustice from an early age and recognize the fact that most of my lifestyle depended on the panful lifestyle of others. It would take me longer to find the words to articulate why I felt so committed to FTC but in time I came to realize that it helped me accept the fact that if the freedom I enjoyed in my life was purchased with the lives of others, even though indirect ways, I had a responsibility to learn more about systems of injustice.
I stayed with this work through high school, a Jesuit all-boys Catholic school that deepened my passion for social justice and relationships with the poor that could revolutionize the world. Bellarmine also helped hone my love for acting and the arts. Theater had been another passion of mine but it was not until high school that I began to use art as a inroad to people. Acting helped open doors to human connection and character development that I could begin applying to people and projects. The theater was a wonderful dojo for training my young communication skills and interactive intuition.
It was also through Bellarmine that I traveled to South Africa for the first time on an immersion trip. At the end of the trip, Roy, one of the South African guys we had stayed with the for the week admitted that he thought we had come to South Africa as white tourists without any real concern for him or his country. Our brief time together had made him to reconsider and he become a mentor for my friend and I when returned two summers later to study the effects of the classic immersion model and cross cultural communication among adolescents.
The same summer of South Africa I performed with a group of friends at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, building a small business model that connected storytelling and our South African experience.
It was also through Bellarmine that I traveled to South Africa for the first time on an immersion trip. At the end of the trip, Roy, one of the South African guys we had stayed with the for the week admitted that he thought we had come to South Africa as white tourists without any real concern for him or his country. Our brief time together had made him to reconsider and he become a mentor for my friend and I when returned two summers later to study the effects of the classic immersion model and cross cultural communication among adolescents.
The same summer of South Africa I performed with a group of friends at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, building a small business model that connected storytelling and our South African experience.
The following summer I traveled to India to work with Destiny Reflection. It was exciting to work in country with a social enterprise as most of my work with FTC had been on the other end of the enterprise. The company was designed to create economic alternatives to the sex trade in Kolkata and the vital work they were doing helped women at risk or in the trade, develop tools to help protect themselves. Smarita and her team welcomed myself and my friend immediately and encouraged us to work with Salesforce on an e-commerce platform. While all of this was exciting, I was most curious about organizational development and how the company was run. It was exciting to compare my experience with FTC’s social enterprise model and challenge Desity's team with new questions that often had answers I could have never imagined from another perspective. Fr. Greg Boyle’s like to say that perhaps less important than what you stand for is where you stand, and my time in India makes me very excited to travel to Zambia and learn and develop what I could never imagine from my seat in the States.
A recent dose of perspective was my time studying abroad in El Salvador this past Fall. The Casa de Solidaridad was a revolutionary educational model that paired college courses with four months of community living with Salvadoran students directly affected by the long and messy history of U.S. foreign relations. My time there was a long and ongoing lesson in learning how to ask the right questions. Because the Casa program follows a strict accompaniment approach and strives for solidarity, I am excited to explore social development and community dialogue from a different angle and with a whole new lens.