Columbia University

We were walking down Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv, just a few months after the Revolution of Dignity, when people rallied there to stand up to the government and oust a corrupt president. My father explained to me that volunteers help others because of their belonging to a community; their contribution became vital to Ukraine’s rebirth. From that moment, I started to look for opportunities to engage in the community. In the 9th grade, I stood in front of the thirty students who promised to say “Wow!” to any physics experiment. I wanted to show them how to set fire to cotton wool using a…