Service is the quintessential aspect of a Jesuit education. Many clubs and organizations at Jesuit are solely dedicated to service. Seniors are even excused from most classes one day each week to serve others.
While service is a requirement at Jesuit, this key element can unfortunately be ignored after graduation. Some Jesuit alumni, however, still manage to continue to serve others in their lives beyond Jesuit.
One such alumnus is Edgar Cruz ‘10. Cruz became so devoted to service that his outstanding achievements were recognized by President Obama this fall.
Cruz began his service on the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council located in Chicago. Although he only worked as an intern, he was able to take away many important ideas about poverty that shaped his life and increased his will to serve others.
Specifically, he commented on his experience there, saying that it increased his awareness of “low wage families, [who] are forced to support their youth” but also his focus on “their long work hours and often multiple jobs.” He also chose this area of service so that he could “bring some of those solutions and ideas back to Dallas.” This humbling experience led to his renowned work with the AmeriCorps program.
The AmeriCorps website says this about the organization: “AmeriCorps engages more than 75,000 Americans in intensive service each year at nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community and faith-based groups across the country.” It goes on to say that over 900,000 members have served with the organization and that these volunteers have amassed over 1.2 billion hours of service.
Cruz’s involvement with the AmeriCorps program was unexpected. Cruz said, “Due to a change of life plans, I stumbled across this wonderful program.” He also cited Erik Burrell, faculty member and head of the MAGIS program at Jesuit, as one of a few friends who led him to his involvement with the program.
After persistent dedication to the program, Cruz has worked his way up, residing now in Washington D.C. and working with “Higher Achievement.” Cruz described this organization as “a participant in AmeriCorps program, which aims to close the opportunity gap for middle school students in under resourced communities through the development of a rigorous after school and summer academic programmatic effort.”
Cruz, describing his service to the program, continued: “As an Achievement AmeriCorps Fellow I assist students in completing their homework and projects. I recruit, prepare, and manage volunteers and mentors, as well as provide support in the day-to-day tasks for the organization.” Cruz’s current project involves “organizing open houses with respective high schools to visit” for some of the underprivileged teenagers in “Higher Achievement.”
Cruz became so involved with the program that the President felt his service warranted national attention. Cruz, along with a select few AmeriCorps members in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore areas, was invited to participate in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, a very prestigious event. Honoring the organization’s twentieth anniversary, the ceremony took place on September 12th.
Asked to arrive around 8 A.M., Cruz was able to meet with President Obama’s staff and administration before the ceremony began. Additionally, he conferenced with the President for about twenty minutes. Cruz described this as a “truly humbling experience.”
As the ceremony commenced at around 9:30 A.M., the invitees were transferred to the South Lawn. President Obama addressed Cruz and asked him to introduce the Higher Achievement Program. Then, Cruz explained that he, along with a few other AmeriCorps members, “spoke briefly about [their] experience thus far, why [they] decided to serve, and [talked] through why service is important for this country and [their] communities.”
After the ceremony, Cruz and his fellow AmeriCorps members were invited to a reception at the Warner Theater, a signature landmark in Washington D.C. In addition to describing this as humbling, Cruz also commented on how the experience “really echoed Jesuit’s values and traditions of being ‘Men for Others’.”
Even though Cruz was the honoree of the ceremony, he still took away many valuable lessons from the experience. Chiefly, the “experience has taught me…that public service takes many different forms,” explained Cruz. He continued, saying that service “draws us into a place of reflection, appreciation, and understanding of the world around us.”
Cruz expounded upon the familiar Jesuit ideals: “For me that encompasses a reflection of my role and place in the world and being able to see God in all things. That having an appreciation for new ideas and innovation to resolve problems for the world is extremely important. Taking a risk on a new idea gets us closer to solid, sustainable, and efficient solutions.”
Concluding his takeaway from the remarkable experience, Cruz ended with these inspiring words: “Finally, we all must drive to have an understanding that America’s inequality did not just happen, but it has been politically engineered, so much so that it requires a deep desire to want to be agents of social change. There is beauty and art to these three things, and I look forward to identifying these three concepts for myself throughout my time in public service.”
Just as Cruz took away many important lessons from his experience, the Jesuit community as a whole can take away a similar message. Although most acts of service will not receive praise from the president, they certainly do not go unnoticed.
As alumnus Edgar Cruz has demonstrated, service is not merely a required chore; it is a key aspect of our everyday life that cannot be ignored.
