Personal Statement #4

Character In Action, also known as the CIA at Omaha South High School, is a unique group made up of high school athletes that want to give back and help their community. CIA is only at South High and was composed by Matt Curtis, a social studies teacher and baseball couch, because he wanted to give back to all the sponsors that put in their money to build South High's stadium Collin Field and many other projects. Knowing that he could not give it all back financially he decided that he would put together a group of athletes that had responsibility, leadership, and caring characters. I was one of the first original twenty members to begin the group.

I am very involved with this group. I get to interact with students like myself. We all had the same goal in mind. We wanted to give back to the community for what they had given us. We decided to not only help our community, but also other communities that were in need of help. We would meet once a week because the other members and myself had other activities to do throughout the week. We decided to go out to elementary schools and show them our enthusiasm. We would go during the students recess and play with them. By the time recess was over and it was time for us to leave they would ask us to come back.

We also took Halloween to the Children's Hospital Daycare. I loved seeing the childrens' faces with big smiles. These are children with disadvantages that sometimes can not enjoy everyday activities like I do or a person without any disadvantages does. We painted pumpkins and faces; we read them Halloween stories and we played with them. After it was over we decided to go back the following year because all the members liked that experience.

In the CIA we are all the leaders. We, the members, are the ones that plan our events and where and who we will be helping next. Sometimes this is a challenge because we only meet once a week. This program has helped me in a sense that I know that when we call each other a community, we should not only talk about ourselves within the community, but also remember the people in our surrounding. The world is supposed to be one community, but it is difficult because of our different opinions of humanity.


Our current project is building a community park. It is located on the corner of 24th and L. It is small but we are trying to make it warming for everyone. There are people from UNO helping us with the murial we decided to put up. The murial represents Omaha and our diversity. The CIA members are taught to always think positive and try to help everyone. We want to make an impact on our community.