Next came the handshakes. As we entered, children ran forward, jutting out their hands to the first blue-uniformed person they could reach. Boys jostled to get there first, while girls shyly looked at their feet and giggled shyly. They threw out their hands amid cries of "Gracias," like I had done something great to deserve their gratitude. As I followed Mrs. Manguy, the current chairwoman of the Tzu Chi Tijuana office, trailing our way to the principal's office, I realized that she had earned their gratitude. The children were doing more than shaking my hand and thanking me--they were giving thanks to my uniform. Blue and white, as the story goes, for a sky of compassion--the uniform of the Tzu Chi Foundation.

Considering how widely Asian culture has spread throughout the States, I'm often surprised at how little information on Tzu Chi manages to breach the language barrier. Consisting of over five million members in over twenty countries, this Taiwan-based charity organization helps millions of people in some of the poorest areas in the world. But even with the incredible amount of good done by its thousands of volunteers, I learned of it only after my mother started mysteriously disappearing three days a week. I later discovered she had been going to Tijuana.

As for myself, my memory of my first experience in Mexico is of dust and poverty, of skeleton dogs following skeleton children. My view of the world was shaken by the trip, and my fourth-grade teacher wanted me to write an essay about the experience when I returned. But the flu--and a childish desire to forget--had me making excuses. It wasn't my schedule that needed re-writing--it was my compassion.

Clouds overhead were slightly gray when Mrs. Manguy and a group of volunteers finished loading the minivans in San Diego. As we crossed the Mexican border, three seemingly important cases on our agenda stood out to me: food for a home struck by death and poverty, clothing for a single mother with six children, and backpacks for the Tzu Chi Elementary School. I was familiar with these cases and had seen the school before, but the reception the children gave was one that brought home just how much Tzu Chi affected their lives. Built in 1996 with funds from the foundation, the Tzu Chi Elementary School of Tijuana is a beacon of hope, where hundreds of uniformed children come to learn and play in an oasis surrounded by shantytowns and roadside landfills. By the time our troop finally reached the principal's office, hundreds of children had gathered around to peek through the windows.

Throughout the day we handed out prizes to students (but only to those who did well on their tests) and, more importantly, food to families and clothes to children. One girl's face nearly lit up the sky when we measured her shoe size and started digging through the minivan. It was incredible to me to see how important a pair of shoes could be to a person. The shoes we had brought were production surplus, new shoes that could not be sold because they were out of fashion. But for Maria, a clean school uniform and new shoes that were only slightly mismatched were better than anything a designer could provide.

It was at school the next day that I felt the disjunction between my home and Tijuana, this time in reverse. Irritating cracks in the cement pavement near my home became suddenly luxurious besides the ever-dusty roads in Tijuana, and row upon row of glimmering new cars drew images of children with raggedy old shoes and barefoot mothers. What right did those fifty miles have to deprive those children of the same kind of future we are offered? By what right could we live in the knowledge that whole generations of human potential--the greatest kind there is--is going to waste? Only an hour's drive separates the Tzu Chi school and mine, but it is more than mere distance that divides the two seemingly alien worlds. Instead, it is a gap of compassion, a chasm that allows us to live our lives in self-made seclusion in the face of withering sunflowers. Tzu Chi has given me an education that cannot be taught in schools, an education that will take me the rest of my life to attain. And yet it is an education that pays for itself immediately, in the sights of smiles and glittering eyes.

A group of friends and I have planned another trip to Tzu Chi Elementary, this time to paint it. While we may only be putting color on walls that will still freeze in winter and leak in spring, perhaps the sky will be just a bit bluer and the clouds just a bit whiter--like the skies of Tzu Chi.