La Vida Idealist

Isabel Arguelles was born in Mexico City, where she currently resides. She has also lived in Canada for a year, Florence, Italy for half a year, and spends summers in NYC. Isabel is still in college and when the time came to choose her major, she was a little confused and didn’t know which one to choose. She always knew she wanted to help people but didn’t know how – until she had a class where she realized she wanted to have her own nongovernmental organization. Finally she decided to study marketing, hoping this would bring her closer to understanding the nonprofit sector. She’s looking to get involved in this sector in 2010 and wants to tell you all about her journey. She also loves to travel and hopes to embark on her next adventure in August.

There are many things in life you don’t get to choose, but the choices that you do make are the ones that will change your life forever. For the last 19 years of my life I have made some right choices and some wrong ones, and I don’t regret a single one. It’s the sum of those experiences that make me who I am today.

I’m at a point in my life where another decision is to be made, and this time I want to choose right. I can continue my life as I have done the past years or I can make a difference. I’m surrounded by people that think that one person can’t make a difference, that one is just not enough. Maybe they are right, but if there’s the slightest chance that they could be wrong, then I will continue to try to change the world.

I have volunteered once or twice, but never done something steady, and I have never committed to an organization. But now that I’m starting college, I have to ask myself questions I have tried really hard to avoid as I’ve begun to wonder where am I going. A few months back questions like this one used to make me really nervous; I hate not having a plan, and people expect you to know what you want to do with your life by the time you’re 18. In the past I just couldn’t make up my mind. But suddenly on one quiet autumn afternoon it hit me: I wanted to help. I wanted to be involved with nonprofit organizations, and I even wanted to have my own NGO.

I have decided that for the year 2010 I will explore the world of volunteering in Mexico. The problem here is not that we lack NGO’s or people wanting to volunteer, the problem is that many NGO’s are so small that no one really knows they even exist. Let’s see if we can change that.

For more on Mexico, check out posts by Sarah Kelly, Arthur Richards and Andrea Vogler.

Latest posts by Guest

• Top 10 Things to do Ecuador - February 6th, 2012
• Guest Post: To Kiva Fellow or not to Kiva Fellow, Eso e’ la pregunta. (Part III of III) - November 24th, 2011
• Guest Post: To Kiva Fellow or not to Kiva Fellow, Eso e’ la pregunta. (Part II of III) - November 23rd, 2011
• Guest Post: To Kiva Fellow or not to Kiva Fellow, Eso e’ la pregunta. (Part I of III) - November 22nd, 2011
• The Adventure Illusion or: how I learned to stop thinking and just ride a bike - November 12th, 2011
• Connecting the Least Connected (with people who can help!) - November 11th, 2011
• Quetzaltrekkers: Into the Clouds, Part 3 - July 5th, 2011
• Quetzaltrekkers: Into the Clouds, Part 2 - June 27th, 2011
• Quetzaltrekkers: Into the Clouds, Part 1 - June 20th, 2011
• A Guest Post by Carolyn Chuong: Mucu-what? - June 17th, 2011