Former student Rajeev Goyal delivers inspiring speech
Herricks High School held its graduation ceremonies on the football field at the school last Thursday evening. Every year the graduating class votes where to hold the ceremony and so far each class has voted, unanimously to hold the ceremony on the home football field which is a nice tradition.
This year, in spite of the extreme heat, the students were as enthusiastic as ever and deeply inspired by guest speaker Rajeev Goyal, a 1997 graduate of Herricks High.
After graduating from Brown University in 2001, with a degree in English Literature, Rajeev Goyal, a member of the Peace Corps, was sent to Namje village in the eastern hills of Nepal, India to teach English.
However, it didn’t take him long to realize that the village suffered from an incapacitating water shortage and in order to obtain any water at all entire families would have to walk down the steep mountain to the river to collect water. Many, in fact, made the two-hour trip five to six times a day.
Determined to help, Goyal traveled back to the states and raised close to $50,000 from a group of Indian doctors on Long Island and helped construct a two-stage water pumping system that supplies clean water to 800 people.
Further, he raised more than $250,000 for a new school and water and environment projects for Nepal, traveling back more than 10 times, while still in law school.
His point to the graduates was that “you can make a difference, just like I did, so go out there and make that difference.”
