A package rustles as it is taken from senior Aditi Busa’s hand. The sound of a pencil scraping on paper is deafened by the busy streets of Washington, as she writes down the name and information of the stranger. She lowers her clipboard and smiles, happy to be helping kids in need.
To help the children, Busa went to a state officer leadership conference Sept. 19-24 in Washington D.C. as apart of HOSA.
“Every year, the state officers go to Washington, D.C. and [meet with] the state officers for every state,” Busa said. “We basically go there to advocate for this organization called NMDP.”
The National Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit organization helps cancer patients find blood cell donors, so they can get blood transplants.
“We swabbed people and added them to a registry so that hopefully they can be matched with a cancer patient,” Busa said. “It’s not the same as matching someone by their blood type, instead they match the proteins in their blood. So it’s a bit harder to find a match.”
While at the conference, HOSA officers went to Capitol Hill to advocate for the importance of HOSA, and to discuss the Texas Legislature and the dissolution of the Department of Education.
“HOSA is a [Career and Technical Education] program, and the legislation is directly impacting HOSA, so we went and talked to them about why funding HOSA is important and we explained our side of the story,” Busa said. “Obviously it’s something that [won’t] fully cause a bunch of change, but the purpose was just to share our story and have these conversations about why this is relevant to HOSA as an organization.”
On top of fundraising in the street, Busa said she learned the importance of advocacy.
“It pushed me out of my comfort zone,” Busa said. “I’ve never gone onto the street and tried to fundraise for something before, so it was a new experience. But I did it with my friends, so it was nice to do that with a group of people and do it for a good cause.”
To become a state officer, Busa ran for area office her sophomore year, and was elected as area secretary. As a junior, she was elected area president. HOSA splits Texas into seven regions, and each president from that region becomes a state officer.
“Miss Guerra [the HOSA advisor] was the one that motivated me to run for area office in the first place,” Busa said. “I wouldn’t even know what it was if it wasn’t for her. When I was a freshman, I went to the Fall Leadership Conference, and I remember seeing that year’s area officers on stage. I had no idea who they were, but I thought it was really cool that it was a group of high schoolers, on stage running this huge event. and I thought ‘that’s so cool, maybe one day I could do that.’”
Busa said she plans to continue working with the National Marrow Donor Program, and plans to continue fundraising within the school chapter.
“All the advocacy that I learned in D.C., I’m going to continue applying that to HOSA to promote and further our service projects at school,” Busa said. “But then as part of the state team, we have conferences coming up, so we’ll be planning the state leadership conference in March.”
Busa said she hopes to continue to foster an environment where students can learn, collaborate and network.
“That’s what the heart of HOSA is and all these activities are bringing students together and promoting a welcoming environment,” Busa said.
