In It for Life

Last night a few of us went out for drinks at one of two bars -- if you can really even call them bars -- in Parramos. And after maybe a beer too many, Nicole, Sharon, Celeste, and I found ourselves in a conversation about "Hey, I wonder when NPH is going to open up a new house. We could totally just do it ourselves. Nicole, you got Montessori. Carrie, the office and our PR. Celeste, raising baby leaders. Sharon, whatever else we need. Hahahaha."

Now we obviously weren't serious (I don't have plans lined up to move to South America anytime soon), but maybe we sort of were.

The thing about the NPH organization is that once you're in it, you're in it for life -- if you want to be. The number of people who become a part of NPH through a volunteer year during their early 20s and then go on to stay at NPH homes, or work at NPH fund raising offices in their home countries, or heck, even go on to become National Directors of an NPH home (3 current National Directors started out as volunteers years ago), is staggering.

I once read a testimonial of someone who started out as an NPH volunteer and later made his way up to assisting the National Director of one of the homes. He said something like, "I never thought this organization was going to become my whole life, but you can't plan life, and it has."

I liked what he said, and I like what it means. Who knows where any of us will be 10 years down the road, but it's cool to think that an NPH-related job could be a very real possibility -- if we wanted it to be. 

So maybe when we're 40 we'll all be toasting beers again saying, "Remember that night in Parramos when we totally called this?" :)