Being a Sudanese person that grew up in Thailand, my experiences as an immigrant that saw Sudan from the outside molded me to become an up-stander, dedicating my skills and interests to be used as tools that I can utilize to help my Sudanese community. It hurts my heart to see the poverty, lack of good education, and less reliable energy in Sudan, every time I go back to visit family. Historically, no ‘real’ help has come that will truly change the way my people live and solve these problems; UNICEF and the UN may send support, but in order to truly help people we must drastically improve the existing economic infrastructure. Support from these organizations may palliate the short-term problems, but I know in order to be truly effective, the sort of help Sudan needs has to be tailor-made to Sudan focusing on the fundamental infrastructure that facilitates the establishment of a functional thriving society. One of the fundamental pieces of infrastructure that needs to be put in place in order to establish a functional society is the energy infrastructure. Without energy, we can’t even begin to talk about things like transportation, water, and quality of life; energy is the medium for meaningful work. I want to be pursuing mechanical engineering because I believe that the dry and hot conditions in Sudan will best suit solar infrastructure, more than other sustainable energy technologies. Armed with this idea in mind, has motivated me to pursue mechanical engineering, working on the technical aspects of developing such projects but also on the policy side of creating projects of that scale. I acted on these ideas by engaging in activities and leadership positions at Bunker Hill such as the student government association’s vice president of communications, while also engaging in the STEM club as the electric bike lead and past treasurer of the 2022-2023 term. As the vice president of communications in the student government association, my sole responsibility is to facilitate how to improve the connection between the student voice and the administration. I believe that actions speak louder than words and that philosophy has been passed down to me from my parents and instilled in the work I do. This philosophy is exhibited in the projects that I undertake in SGA, such as the communications project where we collaborate with our Visual and Media Arts (VMA) students to start a club that will produce simple and digestible content helping new and returning students get acquainted with the resources available at Bunker Hill. Another project that I’m working on with fellow student government members is the Bulldog stories where we collect student stories to advocate for more funding for community college. My approach to advocacy is not one that comes in the form of activism but rather a more systematic based approach where I can make changes intrinsically to the structures in place or create structures that accompany the changes, that need to be made. I prefer to engineer methods that make students' voices heard rather than being the mouthpiece that I believe can make students’ voices heard even louder. The skills that I accrue from my experiences help me in becoming an effective upstander that I believe can create change that not only works when these solutions are conceived but also last beyond the people that conceive them. My goal is to use the culmination of these skills to positively impact the communities that I’m a part of especially the Sudanese community.