The strong smell of disinfectant infiltrated my nostrils. The fluorescent lights and white walls pierced my eyes. I looked down at my trembling hands, twisting and turning them as if doing so would hold down the turmoil inside me. Despair roamed the room, expelled on the breath of fearful family members like me who were doing their best to bite down on the pain that brought them here. It was Thanksgiving Day, and instead of counting our blessings at the dinner table, I found myself sitting at my brother's bedside as a long, flat, piercing sound penetrated my ears. My brother had passed away. I watched as his body vanished into what had been fragmented by a heart attack. The plaques and blockages that accumulated in his heart now seeped into our daily lives. It was as if I was touched by something chronic; something that wasn’t fatal, but still felt like it could be. In search of an outlet to conquer this emotional numbness, I sought to channel my energy into something more restorative. In December 2018, I volunteered at Cannan Orphanage in Mombasa, Kenya with an international platform called Global Encounters. As a group of 40 people that were selected from a body of Ismaili Muslim students, my connections with the children were acutely intimate. The carefree attitudes and contagious smiles I was greeted with would have never led me to question their compromised quality of life. The children bathed in saltwater, used their fingers to brush their teeth, and cared for their menstrual cycles with cardboard boxes and brown paper bags. As I witnessed their hardships, a growing sense of responsibility stirred within me. I no longer felt numb. An accumulation of every touching story from Cannan Orphanage resulted in Vijiti, a local and globally-focused nonprofit organization that I founded. Vijiti delivers medical supplies and creates hygiene curriculum for schools to uplift marginalized areas in Africa and Asia. My peers now help the cause through the Vijiti Club at my high school. With the help of our volunteers, Vijiti has served 3,000 care packages on a global scale and has designed a health curriculum for seven schools this past year. Not only did starting Vijiti give me a sense of control, but for the first time, I realized that I had the power to do something: I could prevent another family from experiencing pain and loss similar to mine. The memory of my brother dying will always be sad and it will always hurt, but experiences like these have shaped me just as much as the joyful ones have. And just as permanently. My life lacked a purpose after my brother’s life was gone, but his death gave life to Vijiti, and Vijiti gave more meaning to my life. And this is how I honor my brother: by making sure his death isn’t a black hole that sucked me in, but instead the spark I needed to be able to burn brighter.