A trip to Dharvi Anonymous

In December of 2017, I traveled to Mumbai, India. What was supposed to be just a two-week, relaxing, and fun-filled trip visiting extended family, turned into a chain of eye-opening and life-changing events for me. My cousins were part of a local youth volunteering non-profit organization in Santacruz, Mumbai called United Salaam. The organization collects food, clothing, and essential needs for those that resided in the slums and poorer areas, mainly an area called Dharavi. Dharavi is one of India’s largest slums with a population of over a million. My cousin asked if I wanted to volunteer to make a difference and I agreed.

I spent two weeks collecting essential needs such as bags of rice, wheat, sugar, lentils, vegetables, milk, clothing, heavy gas tanks for cooking, and many other everyday items. All of this was done in the hot Indian climate and we would either have to walk along numerous unpaved gravel roads or use auto-rickshaws. Delivering the essentials in Dharavi was one of the hardest challenges I had ever overcome in my life. There was devastation and poverty as far as the eye could see. The residents of Dharavi had constructed homes out of old debris, mud, broken wood, and roofs constructed of rusty brown sheets of...