In 2022, Kevin Wall traveled to Kenya with The Water Project to support clean water access in rural schools and communities. For a counselor who spent his days helping students plan for the future, the trip was a reminder of why perspective matters in education. The experience shaped how he talks with young people about service, gratitude, and the wider world.
The work itself was practical. The Water Project focuses on bringing reliable, clean water to communities that lack it, which affects everything from health to whether children can attend school. In many rural areas, students spend hours each day collecting water instead of sitting in a classroom. A working well changes that equation. Kevin Wall saw how a basic resource that many students take for granted can decide whether another student gets an education at all.
That contrast is the heart of service learning. Kevin Wall, a counselor used to talking with students about grades and college, returned with stories that reframed those conversations. When a student complained about a heavy backpack or a long walk to class, he could gently point to peers across the world who walk miles for water before school even begins. The aim was never guilt. It was perspective, the kind that helps a young person see their own circumstances more clearly.
Service learning works best when it connects action to understanding. A trip like this is not tourism, and a thoughtful counselor is careful to say so. The point is to contribute real labor to a community-led project while learning from the people who live there. Kevin Wall approached the work as a partner rather than a rescuer. The community defined its needs, and outside volunteers helped meet them.
There is also a lesson about scale. Big problems like global water access can feel too large to touch. Service learning breaks that feeling by showing students that one project, one well, one community makes a measurable difference. Kevin Wall used this idea to encourage students to start where they are. A local food drive, a tutoring program, or a neighborhood cleanup teaches the same habit of contribution on a smaller scale.
The trip also informed how Kevin Wall thought about equity at home. Seeing how access to a single resource shaped a child’s future sharpened his attention to the barriers his own students faced. A student without reliable internet, a quiet place to study, or enough food is dealing with their own version of a missing resource. Good counseling means noticing those gaps and helping to close them.
The 2022 Kenya project stayed with Kevin Wall because it tied together the threads of his work — education, access, and community. A counselor who has knelt in the dirt to help build a well brings a certain steadiness to a conversation about a missed deadline. Perspective, once earned, tends to stay.