Whitney Heeres saw Haitian children playing soccer in front of her just as she would see American children playing the game.
The kids laughed and played with each other on a field located in a village in the mountains of Haiti. While it may have seemed like any typical soccer game at first, Heeres witnessed one difference from any other.
Instead of kicking a real soccer ball, the kids were using an empty milk jug.
Even as Heeres tells the story five months after seeing it, her words paint the image of the milk jug still clear in her mind.
But her recollection isn't because of how sad it was for her. For those kids, Heeres said, were overjoyed to just have something to play with.
"To them, they don't really know any different," she said. "They just take everything they have."
It's a feeling Heeres, a sophomore on the Ball State women's volleyball team, became accustomed in the last week of May. During that time, she worked in Haiti with the program Love a Child to help with relief efforts for the massive earthquake that struck the country in January 2010.
Her passion to help those in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, didn't just start with herself.
It was her grandfather, who was heavily involved in Love a Child, who first inspired her to support those families in Haiti struggling to find food, medication or even a house to sleep under.
Even though Heeres' grandfather passed away six years ago, hearing about Haiti from him and seeing pictures and videos of the island country was enough for her. She knew she had to help in any way she could.
Once Love a Child brought her into the country, she immediately went to work, helping the program distribute food and give medical attention to people who needed it.
But even though she had heard about Haiti most of her life, she wasn't prepared for what she saw.
"You hear about it and you see pictures, but once you're there, it's so much different," Heeres said. "It's just so sad how they live and seeing what they go through every day."
Heeres' job with Love A Child was simple, yet demanding. As vaccinations were given to children in the medical clinics in the mountains, Heeres held the kids to comfort them when they received the shots.
Taking care of up to 70 different Haitian kids in only one week brought the young girl from Michigan into an entirely different world, one that she soon became accustomed to.
"I was definitely out of my comfort zone," Heeres said. "When I got there at first, it didn't take long to get used to it. All of the people were open to us in a way. All of the kids would come to us and they wanted to see who we were."
Now in the middle of her second season of volleyball for Ball State, the experiences Heeres gained in Haiti haven't left her. She still looks at her life in a different way than before.
"Not taking things for granted was the first thing I learned," she said. "All of the materialistic things we have here really are not that important when you think about it when they have nothing. They're living on a dirt floor or living with basically a shack above their head. Sometimes they don't even have a shack to live in."
Heeres' willingness to give her support to the people of Haiti didn't surprise Ball State coach Steve Shondell. He said he knew she has the personality for helping anyone who needs it.
"It says an awful lot about her character," he said. "She's a people person. She's just willing to anything to help others, and that's what makes her such a special girl."
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