Helping Those Who Have Hurt Us by Samantha

Helping Those Who Have Hurt Us by Samantha - February 2020 Scholarship Essay

One of the biggest issues facing society today is unforgiveness. It is a natural tendency of humans to hold grudges and act ungraciously against our neighbors. Typically, when we think of charity, we think of organizations that help orphans and the homeless, and while it is very good that we desire to help them, there is another group that needs our help. That group is the prisoners. When we think of helping those in need, the last people we want to help are those who have murdered others, robbed banks, and broken the law. However, in order to stop crime, those who commit crime ought to be shown more love. Therefore, if I were to start a nonprofit organization, it would benefit those who are in prison.
A major reason that prisoners need our help is that they are humans too. There are so many prisoners who are good people who made an unfortunate mistake. Often, we look at prisoners as separate from everyone else and forget that they are like us. Sometimes we forget that they might have gone to school, had families who cared for them, and books read to them before bed when they were younger. Of course, many prisoners did not even grow up with these gifts, but the point is that they might have had normal lives before being sent to jail. Sometimes the only difference between prisoners and ourselves is that they made a mistake that ended in a prison sentence. We too make mistakes, and although they made a fatal mistake as opposed to our minor mistakes, it does not mean that we should hate them.
Another reason why prisoners need our help is that they may not know love. On the opposite end of what was previously mentioned, there are many prisoners who did not live normal lives before prison. For example, it is very common for men in prison to have grown up without a father figure. For these men who have grown up without a father, they may be asking themselves why. There are so many other examples of difficult family situations that prisoners may have grown up with, and most of them are not experienced by most people. It is hard to understand what their lives are like, and we probably will never fully comprehend this, but we should do our best to help those who need help.
Nonprofit organizations mostly reach out to the innocent, and while this is certainly important, we should also reach out to the broken and guilty since they are usually ignored. In order to grow as a society, we need to help the people who we do not want to help even if it makes us uncomfortable. We have all made mistakes, and even though we have not made prison-worthy mistakes, it does mean we should ignore those who have. We need a nonprofit organization that helps those who have hurt us so that they may experience forgiveness and learn what love is.