One's individual responsibility to help and support one another should not be restricted by boundaries based on traditional definitions of community. These traditional definitions of a community may be understood as physical or geographical boundaries, social boundaries, familial ties, shared livelihood strategies, racial groups, religious groups, or some other identity composition. First, it is imperative to reframe the community as a malleable and ever-changing space. The community has historically been understood in terms of arbitrary lines of demarcation at best; and political projects at worst. By stepping out of this traditional framework, we open ourselves to understand our community as our constant engagement with any people in any given space, whether or not we ascribe to that specific space, people, culture, or lifestyle. In other words, the community is a place that we are continuously engaged in, no matter where we are. It is simultaneously a place for agency and a structure that shapes our actions, behaviors, and understandings of the world. With this new understanding as a point of departure, people can reimagine their involvement within every community in a way that is not so different from their engagement in their original community. People being involved in a community is important for a host of reasons. Involvement fosters connections and builds trust. Involvement creates space for differences to be celebrated. It can also act as a source of stability and inspiration within the community. Both familiar and foreign communities should be engaged in a way that leads with these reasons. In the summer of 2017 in my home community of Los Angeles, I was a volunteer tutor for homeless children. The program I volunteered for was a 501c3, non-profit organization called School on Wheels. Located in an office directly on Skid Row, the most impoverished area in downtown Los Angeles, I tutored six days a week. Most of my students were between the ages of five and 12 years old. They all lived in temporary housing such as churches, motels, or cars. My official role was to tutor them in their school subjects but I quickly found that my unofficial role was much greater than that. One of my students, a six-year-old boy named Michael, came into the tutoring center one day not acting like the happy, cheerful Michael I had come to know over the recent weeks. Today his eyes were fixed towards the floor as he slowly and silently made his way through the room full of children’s laughter and cheerful outbursts. His shoulders were slumped and his head was low. Before he sat down at our tutoring session, I walked over to him and dropped to a knee to meet his eye contact. As I asked him what was going on. He avoided my eyes. I remained on one knee, kept eye contact with him, and asked him if I could do anything to help him. He was silent and continued to stare away from me. I asked if he needed a hug. Without words, he nodded his head and leaned into me with his arms open. He then whispered to me that he slept on the street last night with his family, including his baby sister. They got kicked out of the motel they were staying in for failing to pay and the local church was full; his family had nowhere else to go. Quietly, he told me that he was scared. As I held Michael closer I knew then that my responsibility to him, as well as the rest of my students, was much greater than being a school tutor. I had to be there to support them, inspire them, and be a force of stability in their lives. We continued our tutoring session. I could see he was happier and more focused on school after he had talked to me. As the tutoring session went on, he slowly returned to being the happy, cheerful Michael I knew. Here I began to understand the role that school can play in shaping the outcomes of precarious children. While stable living conditions, family continuity, and food security were rarities in my students’ lives, I realized that school could ameliorate some of these factors. Furthermore, I realized that teachers’ pedagogy shapes student outcomes; not only in the classroom but in their lives as well. Anecdotally discovering that precarious youth could benefit from certain pedagogical practices has informed my drive to uncover more empirical evidence on this subject. One year later in the Summer of 2018, I was attending the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate. I had earned a scholarship to do eight weeks of fieldwork in Pokhara, Nepal in the education sector. This experience required that I conduct fieldwork within a children’s home in which 85 Tibetan refugees between the ages of three and 18 were housed. As a researcher, I had a much more objective engagement with this community. However, whether I was in Los Angeles or Nepal, my mission was the same: to support the children, be a force of stability, and inspire them to uncover their dreams to envision a future they wish to become their reality. With my experience in these two communities, I have realized that I can do more. So I have taken my drive to help children to a higher level by pursuing a career in pedagogical research and educational policy reform. As a part of my MSc in Global Development, I am currently researching the effect of different pedagogical models on student self-efficacy in Pokhara, Nepal. I want to uncover the pedagogical styles that are most effective at inspiring children and increasing their self-confidence so they see themselves as the force of change towards the life they want. If awarded the Charles R. Ullman & Associates Educational Support Scholarship, I will utilize the funds to continue this research. Ultimately, I aim to bring this project to Los Angeles and begin to inform teacher's pedagogical styles in my community.