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June 28, 2010
I just quit my job. It feels weird to be sitting at home on a Monday morning, when I could be in some meeting. For the past year, I have been working at an engineering company in Chicago. But for the past year, I have also been working to raise money to build a community kitchen for Tibetan refugees in northern India. While I am extremely appreciative of the opportunity gave me, I finally feel like I am following my passion. The reason I quit my job is to turn this "side" project of mine in to a full time job. Service work has always been the biggest part of my life, and I am so happy that I can finally dedicate every day to it. So here goes nothing. Today is the first day of my unemployment, but I am already back to work. I am leaving for India on July 13th, so in about two weeks. Between now and then, I have a ton of things to take care of. These range from making sure I pack all the proper clothes to preparing a very good model of what I want this project to look like. While I am India I will be dedicating my time to two projects. The first is obviously setting up this first kitchen. Since last September, I was able to raise over $25,000 to build this kitchen that will provide free, healthy and traditional meals to Tibetan refugees in Mcleod Ganj. MG is a small town in the Indian Himalayas and is home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. The money raised will be used to build the kitchen and fully furbish it. While I am there, I will be developing a strategy to ensure the sustainability of the facility. The second project I will be working on is setting up my own non-profit. There are over 300 million people in India who are classified as either hungry or starving. Many of these people are children. I am going to be working with the free government schools to set up a system through which people can donate small sums of money to feed kids in these schools on a daily basis. I have my work cut out for me. I can't tell you how excited I am. This is going to be a journey I will never forget...
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