Volunteer Welcome Letter: Fill & Download for Free

Housing day is one of the only days during the year where you see the undergraduate community erupt in Harvard spirit. (the only other time is the Harvard-Yale game).All Harvard undergrads get housing for all four years of their time at Harvard. Housing Day is when the freshmen get assigned into their upperclassmen dorm.Freshmen live in the Harvard Yard area, where they are assigned to roommates and living accommodations based on their preferences and what they write on their roommate application. There are 17 freshmen dorms. The oldest one, Massachusetts Hall, was built in the early 1700's.Weld Hall in Harvard Yard - Source - Harvard in Late AfternoonEarly in Spring semester, Harvard undergraduates start making "blocking groups", which are groups of 2-8 students who want to live in the same upperclassmen house through their Sophomore through Senior years. These blocking groups can also "link" with "linking groups", which is another blocking group that they want to live in an adjacent house with.The 12 upperclassmen houses at Harvad are Adams, Cabot, Currier, Dunster, Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, Mather, Pforzheimer, Quincy and Winthrop. They host Sophomores through Seniors.On the last Thursday morning before Spring Break (usually sometime in March), Harvard releases the letters assigning blocking groups to upperclassmen who volunteer to deliver these letters to the freshmen in their rooms. The morning of Housing Day is a day of friendly rivalry and ostentatious spirit, with upperclassmen gathering in the Yard, dressed up, cheering and screaming and making noise.The moment when the housing letters are released - Source - Houses become homesGroups of upperclassmen from twelve houses run around, storming into dorms and delivering letters to blocking groups.During lunch, everyone congregates around Annenberg, the freshmen Dining Hall. Freshmen get their welcome letters, t-shirts, and invitations to the House events later that evening. There's still a lot of revelry and celebration in the dining halls.Here's an Housing Day lunch that was mistaken as an Iraq War protest.Later that evening, new freshmen are invited for dinner at the upperclassmen houses. There are various events going on that day, including bouncy houses and petting zoos and house gatherings.That evening, the freshmen have an identity, a place of belonging, a home.Harvard Pforzheimer House's Moors Hall (top), Cabot Dining Hall (bottom) - Source - File:Moors Hall, Radcliffe Quadrangle - IMG 1686.jpg

The difference that the ‘Availability of privileges’ brings to our lives.2.30 PM - Cubbon Park, BangaloreI attended the Quora world Meetup last Saturday.It was an entirely different experience for me, nothing like I’ve ever done before. I met some of the most popular writers on Quora, including our own Gopalkrishna Vishwanath.As the meeting progressed, we went on to split into smaller groups to have easier, meaningful conversations. And a girl joined our group after a while to share her views on the topic we were discussing.In the process, she revealed that despite being just 21, she had authored two books and that she had landed a job that paid her loads of money(a bit less than three times of what I make - I am an IT professional with 3 years of experience). She told us she was able to get the job primarily because she was popular on Quora (6 million views and counting). Her ability to communicate her thoughts effectively has made people love her, catapulting her into a successful career.For some reason, in the middle of being amazed by this story, my mind was comparing this young woman to the kids that I had met a few hours back.10.00 AM - BBMP Primary School, Tasker Town, BangaloreI was in Class 7 of this shabby little government aided school, on this Saturday morning along with my co-volunteer. We were there as a part of the “Fly with English” programme organized by the Tech Mahindra Foundation. We were supposed to teach those kids basic level English(greetings, colors) with the help of Rhymes and games. Though it was surprising to me that kids of Class 7 still needed lessons on Names of colors in English, their astounding levels of enthusiasm kept us going.Then came few kids - younger than the ones I was teaching - running into the classroom, asking me to come to their class to teach them. Their reason? There were two of us trainers in this classroom, and none in their classroom.(Some volunteers apparently didn’t turn up). I obliged.They dragged me by my hands into their classroom of just 5 kids.The classroom was dusty, and the poor little kids were dressed in such dirty uniforms that one of the kids’ clothes literally stank like piss. When I made an attempt to talk to them in English, they just stared back at me blankly and asked me to speak in Kannada, which I do not yet speak. Descending down the levels of complexity of lessons, I finally decided to check if they could write their own names in English.And guess what? 4 out of those 5 kids could not write their own names properly. And one kid had trouble writing down the letters that I spelled out for him - he did not even know the complete list of alphabets yet. I did not know if I was more shocked or more saddened, upon finding the poor state that the kids were in.However, I went on and wrote their names in their Notebooks and asked them to practice by repeating it below.On the same day, I encountered both of these experiences. Geographically, they were just a street across - yet in terms of privileges, they were worlds apart.Any of those kids could grow up to become that young woman tomorrow. All they need are access to quality basic education and teachers who really care for them.It is not the fault of these kids that they are growing up without any privileges that the kids of rich parents have.Yet, many of these kids will ultimately turn out to be working class labourers since they do not have enough people to care for their education, and they do not have anyone to even make them understand the importance of education.This difference that the ‘access to privileges’ brings to these kids’ lives - despite due to no mistake of their own, is probably one of the saddest things I have realized lately.PS: Volunteers welcome. The programme runs for 2 more of the upcoming Saturdays as well. And you can choose from 4 different schools around Shivaji Nagar, Lakkasandra, Ulsoor.Time: 10.00 AM to 11.30 AM.The kids need us.

So you want to join my pirates crew?Joking aside. Thank you for asking. I need volunteers for my website and research effort.If you want to help change history then join in by filling this form. Or visit my site to find it. [1]My goals are:Document and research my economic ideology.Create success engineering tools as a project for self enabled business owners around the world.Provide layman investment tools for financial markets to enable self financial security.Help people by answering from my humble experience as possible.All of this will be open sourced and free. I will eventually create a PAMM account to start a seed fund to create a non profit organization for the effort.You can volunteer for this website and the research efforts. You will not be financially compensated. Yet you will be credited on the website, research paper, books and any form of publication relevant to your contribution and is deemed valuable. To the top contributors, I will write a recognition letter and recommendation letter. Please do not join if you are not serious about providing any real effort, this is not a club. Do not join in trying to sell me anything I am not going to buy or hire you.If the foundation seed fund grew large enough to finance the organization quality volunteers will be offered first chance to any future openings. But that may or may not happen, so do not join in hope for a job.You will be volunteering to one of these tasks and we will publish any new tasks on the website:Researcher: Make sure to keep the content in proper research style. list sources and keep proper research style of the economic ideology.Data miner: Find data for simulations and modeling.Simulator and modeler: Create mathematical simulations and models to test the theory and create system dynamics models.Language Editor: English is not my first language.Content miner: Copy my answers from Quora and publish my fan letters.Developer: Develop tools for success engineering and other stuff. Keep the website bugs free.That being said. Welcome and thank you. Let us make history together.Footnotes[1] http://Alioalshamsi.com