Written by Shamira James
Sam Rauf is a senior here at RC, where he is an economics major and played on the RC men’s soccer team for four years. Along with soccer and academics, the Cary, NC native started a personal project called The Blog of Us in an effort to make a positive difference in people’s’ lives.
“My time at Roanoke has been awesome. It flies by, but every moment makes memories you’ll never forget. Soccer was amazing and classes were great. I got to meet people from different parts of the country, and even different parts of the world. College definitely impacts you and shapes who you are as a person and what you give to the world, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I started The Blog of Us to show how easy and cheap it is to help others. I really feel like as people we all have this unified strength in trying to help people out. We all have different taste, but we’re all chasing after the same things in life and when we can all help each other out, we all become stronger as people. It’s honestly not expensive, and it doesn’t have to be something that is always on your mind. If you even think about how you can help someone out and make life better, then that’s all you really need, so that’s what I did.
Through my project, I really try to highlight other organizations that do similarly awesome things to get new ideas on how we can support people around us. Through soccer, one of those things we did was Team Impact. We get to help a local kid who has a life-threatening illness, and they get join to team and become a part of us. We got Cayden, who was such an awesome kid. He was just amazing and all the guys really loved him, and we were rooting for him the whole way. He beat cancer, and that was absolutely incredible. We get to work with kids all over the world here at Roanoke, and that’s super cool. I mean, even just having teammates from like five or six different countries is sort of the foundation of The Blog: no matter where you’re from or the color of your skin or anything like that, we all want the same things, so let’s do it together.
After college, I honestly have no idea what I’m gonna do, but I’m okay with that, I’ll figure it out. I definitely want to keep working on my project. I would love to travel with it and showcase this idea and the message that we are all connected as people. We are divided by political parties, where we fall on spectrums or people try to divide by the color of your skin – which is ridiculous because there is strength in unity. College has given me a lot of opportunities and education, which is something I think the world needs right now. So much knowledge can stem from education. I feel like people who discriminate or hate have never talked to or sat down and had an honest conversation with someone from the other side, and I think that being educated and seeing the world from different viewpoints can drastically change a person.”
Follow the Blog of Us Instagram @theblogof_us and check the website out www.blogofus.com
