Meet Rachel

Rachel, Sarah, Jordana, and I leave for Haiti in FIVE days.  I thought it would be good for y'all to get to know each of them leading up to our departure.  Rachel is a fellow intern and roomate.  Here she is:

I'm Rachel Spinks.  Rachel Lane Spinks if you want to stalk me on Facebook.  I'm 21, an Arkansas native, and with a year and a half of college behind me I've decided that was enough for now and am taking a break to intern with SafeWorldNexus.  I like barbecue, am addicted to coffee and chocolate, and think blue jeans were the best invention ever.  Audrey Hepburn is my hero (somewhere down the line after Jesus and my father,) from her style to her heart for people, the lady was incredible.

In 2007 my parents adopted two siblings from Guatemala.  Since then I've spent a lot of time learning about the orphans crisis and about different ways of caring for them.  I've traveled a few weeks out of the summers since then to different orphanages around the globe encountering a lot of needs and realizing a glimpse of the value of each soul I met along the way.  My own siblings and different people's, cultures, and problems I've encountered turned into a desire to help with more than orphan care.  (I still want to see orphans adopted, but the problem of children being orphaned often stems from poverty, injustice, wars and more.)  So in 2010 while in Uganda with SafeWorldNexus, I heard about the intern program they were starting.  I had been impressed all throughout the trip at how well SafeWorld navigated the balance between seeing projects through while always being focused on valuing people first. They are a young organization with fresh, creative ideas and ways of doing things while always making sure that caring for people is the heart of what they do.  I'm very excited and grateful to be part of what they are doing through the internship!