Building Unity in a “Broken World”

The slogan of the Crossroads Foundation from Hong Kong is, “Connecting people in a world of need,” but the organization also espouses the truism, “One man’s treasure is another man’s trash.” Crossroads seeks to alleviate hardship around the world by connecting “those in need and those who can help.” Students in the AISG branch of Crossroads, which is coordinated by Ms. Ting and led by Eric Huang (11), Paraash Manwani (11), and Roger Wei (12), meet weekly on Wednesdays to organize donation drives of books, clothes, and other materials, which will eventually find homes in parts of the world that lack resources, such as Tibet or Israel.

Crossroads not only helps those in need, but also aims to educate those from privileged backgrounds. At their headquarters in Hong Kong, they offer the “Global X-perience” in which students and adults undergo a simulation of the conditions faced by refugee populations and other people facing extreme hardship. Students who attended the simulation last year agreed that it was intense. Joyce Feng called it a “reality check,” and recalled being put in a room with many other people in which everything was very rushed. Katherine Hsu added, “refugee lives are intense! Everything is go go go; [parents] don’t stop working to pay for children’s school fees” or any of the countless other obligations that people of means rarely think about.

This year, when Crossroads students traveled to the headquarters in Hong Kong, they did some work to raise money for children in Tibet. Jeremy Park said that the fundraising activities, though they required participants to spend hours in the hot sun, were both worthwhile and fun, because the group worked with children and their efforts were for a good cause.

In a complex global landscape described poignantly by Crossroads’ website as “broken,” building ties of material support and understanding between the haves and the have nots is a crucial mission.

For more information about Crossroads, talk to Ms Ting, Eric Huang, Paraash Manwani, or Roger Wei.