Pen pals program with Kenya students

The humankind ​has always had a desire to connect with someone who lives in the other sides of Earth. However, with today's technology, those needs of communication with real people weakened. Social media crowns itself to become the most popular platform that people rely on as a tool to communicate. As the result, human interaction gets shorten into a few words of caption on someone's post or a small messages in the chat section of that post that contains limited value of cultural learning and adopting.

  Recognizing the harm that technologies create, our Key-Club community takes action through encouraging people to participate in a program called Pen Pals. For anyone who isn't familiar with this program, Pen Pals creates a special opportunity for people to exchange letters with strangers. This exchanging allows people to share their stories and learning new cultural values that they probably never knew the existence of. We were completely surprised to see how much people responded to our calls. The enthusiasm that people showed, left us speechless. The process, although has been delayed due to the current health crisis, brought people many different emotions: joy when receiving a new email in their inbox, surprise when recognizing many differences in their living environments, or sad when not hearing back from their partners because of the Covid-19 that stir-up many lives. 

  Through this experience, we realize how much people still desire for communication and interaction. However, they are blinded by that piece of technology. So, it is our responsibility as the new generation to alternate the situation and fix the problem that most people haven't realized, that they got themselves into. Happiness will always be heavier than the number of "likes" that you receive and that is our mission to define it. 

-Anh Nguyen-