Hey! I’m Alexa, the Founder and Editor of Novel Hand. I want to tell you a little bit about myself and why I started Novel Hand.
I’m a senior at Vanderbilt University majoring in political science, economics and spanish with a minor in Latin American studies. I’m originally from Minnesota, and I love going back– at least in the summer. Nothing is more important to me than Jesus and my family, although I really love coffee.
One of my most formative life experiences was spending the summer of 2019 in Guatemala. I spent six weeks volunteering at International Justice Mission (IJM) at their Guatemala City field office and six weeks taking a K’iche’ Maya language class in rural Guatemala. During my time at IJM, I learned so much about their work fighting sexual violence against children in Guatemala. It was such a privilege to contribute to this work. During the second half of the summer, I lived in a Mayan town in a rural area of western Guatemala. I had taken courses in K’iche’, a Mayan language, for the past two years at Vanderbilt, so it was really rewarding to go to the area where that language is spoken. Living with a Mayan host family expanded my worldview in so many ways– you can read more about my experience here.
Volunteering at IJM allowed me to experience living in the community that I was helping. I volunteered and interned at other nonprofits before IJM, but my time there changed how I think about the impact of mission-driven organizations. It exposed me to the challenges of funding. More than anything, it gave me a desire to learn more about how NGOs and other organizations are working on issues like poverty and violence.
As I talked about in our first post, I think that a lot of people my age are passionate about understanding and solving these same issues. And that’s what Novel Hand is all about.
In the first few months of Novel Hand, I want to learn as much as I can about humanitarian issues, nonprofits and solutions to social problems. I want to use my last semester of college to talk to my community at Vanderbilt about the social issues that matter to them, and to start learning about solutions to these issues.
After this beginning exploratory period, I’ll begin to narrow in on topics that I want to continue learning more about. I can’t be sure what this next step with Novel Hand will look like, but I’m excited to see where the next few months bring us. I hope to involve as many people as possible in what we’re doing with Novel Hand.
If you have ideas about which topics Novel Hand should focus on, resources for learning about altruism and humanitarian issues, want to write a post for the site, or literally anything else, please email me at alexa@novelhand.com.
I’m so thankful for this opportunity to learn more about altruism. It’s a privilege to get to work with one of my best friends, Angel, on this project. We’re excited and humbled to launch Novel Hand and to begin learning!
One last thing- you might be wondering what the name “Novel Hand” means. Well, here it is. We use our hands to serve and to help others- really anything that we do requires using our hands. The word “novel” represents taking a new and unique, or novel, approach to altruism and humanitarian issues. So, the name “Novel Hand” illustrates the goal of this project: to explore altruism in the twenty-first century.
Thank you for being a part of what we’re doing!
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