Nicky

He had big dark eyes and a shy, fleeting smile, and he loved me from the moment he saw me. He was tiny, his arms and legs skinny and awkward, like a colt’s. If you ran your hands over his sides, you could have counted his ribs, and his spine was visible when he bent over, the bumps outlined against his grubby red sleeveless T-shirt. When we were introduced, he murmured his name so quietly I had to bend down and ask for it again, even though I could see it on the wooden nametag he wore around a dirty neck. “Nicky,” he said. “My name is Nicky.”

We went everywhere together—to the state park, where we tossed a football and did a nature scavenger hunt, to the grassy lawn of our “base” church. Always, he held my hand and sometimes rode on my back, my own little shadow. It didn’t matter to him that other boys climbed all over me and yelled my name and asked to play games with me; he stayed by my side.

I told him all the time how awesome he was, showering him with praise for anything and everything, no matter how trivial. “You can throw a football better than anybody I know, bud,” I’d say. “You’re the best. Woah, did you draw that picture all by yourself? I would have sworn a professional did that. That’s great.” And every time, he’d receive my compliments with a fleeting, hidden smile, the depths of his dark eyes unfathomable.

For a week we played together. We sang songs together and danced, chased after butterflies and colored pictures on park benches, made more warm fuzzies than I could ever count. Each warm fuzzy—a simple piece of colored yarn worn in bunches on a nametag—was given away to others for good deeds and for encouragement, and I think Nicky gave me the most out of any of the kids in our group. For a week, Nicky was my best friend, and I his.

I would never have met Nicky and the other amazing little kids I did if it wasn’t for Mountain T.O.P., short for Tennessee Outreach Program. Mountain T.O.P. is a faith-based camp held each summer in the Cumberland Mountains. Campers have two options there: they can do simple home repairs for houses in Grundy County, one of the poorest in the nation, or they can do day camp for a week with younger kids from the county. I had done service projects for two years prior to the summer of 2009, but on a whim, I had decided to do day camp that year. It was a decision I will forever be grateful for.

Impacting the world is a tall order. To take it on all at once seems daunting and impossible, so perhaps it is best to start one piece at a time. Mountain T.O.P. and its day camp program is the best step I have taken thus far toward making things better for others. The children I met there could (and did) melt hearts—not only with their sincere honesty and easy love, but with their scruffy, second-hand clothing, dirty faces, and the often-decrepit houses we picked them up from each morning. They would tell stories of the many siblings they lived with, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents thrown in with the usual mishmash of brothers and sisters. To us, their poverty seemed a heavy burden, but they never noticed.

It was in helping these young boys and girls that I realized how badly America’s own poor need help. Comfortable, middle- and upper-class Americans often speak of needing to help other, less fortunate countries through donations and charities, but there are multitudes of the destitute right here, on our own soil. There are people who can’t afford to buy new clothes for themselves or their children and who live off of food stamps. People whose number one shopping destination is Dollar General, followed by Goodwill. People who may not even finish high school because the need for extra income is too great. Other countries need American aid, certainly, but care should be shown at home as well.

Mountain T.O.P. taught me that it’s the little things that make a difference in the world around you. At the graduation ceremony for the groups of day campers, each was given a backpack filled with school supplies and a few small toys. When Nicky got his, he came up to me and said, “I get to keep this? All of it?” I told him that it was a gift to him from us, and the smile that lit up his face was huge. “This is awesome,” he said. “It’s like my birthday.” And all of the sudden, he gave me a huge hug, whispering, “I’ll miss you most.”

I started small, but the changes I saw feel huge.