Patrick O'Harris | Helping the Less Fortunate Achieve Their Dreams

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My Journey to #AchieveMore

The fact that my organization (WCCCD) and I have the ability to improve the lives of people, particularly people whose families have been in a cycle of poverty for generations, is what drives me. We can balance the unbalanced world of opportunity. We provide that little push that can allow a student to dream big and achieve those dreams. Many of our students lack confidence. They have low expectations for themselves because that is what they have been conditioned to think. I try to encourage them to believe they can achieve, and to help remove obstacles in their path as best I can. Though everyone is born equal, opportunities are not equal. My father left school and his family home after 5th grade to work on another family's farm for his room and board. For the rest of his life he resented how others were able to finish their education. He joined the Marines during World War II and found an organization that offered him things he had not experienced in his own family; acceptance, respect, order and reward. My father suffered from PTSD and a lack of opportunity. He was never able to finish school and it handicapped him for his entire life. My father needed someone to encourage his efforts, to tell him he could do anything he set his mind too. I was the first child in my family to graduate from a four-year college, and graduate school. I was lucky that some great instructors got to me before I gave up on myself. Like so many impoverished kids today, my father was not so lucky. The organization I work for provides that acceptance, respect opportunity, tools, and encouragement to those in our society who have fallen through the cracks, to correct the balance of opportunity.

What Drives You to #AchieveMore?

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