Come June 13, freshman Stacie Overton will have had a series of nine immunizations and will be seated on a plane with an anxious smile, flying far away from the familiarities of life in her hometown of St. Helens, Ore. Her destination: the tiny village of Ntenjeru, Uganda.
Working through the Global Volunteer Network, Overton will primarily be raising awareness about HIV, AIDS and their prevention. She will also be spending time side-by-side with AIDS patients and children at a local orphanage.
Overton is one of an increasing number of University students who are exercising their passion to help others in the villages of several developing African nations. These aid workers range from first-time activists to experienced international aid workers.
This trip being her first field experience with non-profit international aid, Overton is excited and apprehensive. She expects the trip to be “the most challenging experience of my life.”
Since returning from a Church mission trip to Russia in 2003, Overton has been anticipating doing similar work in other parts of the world, and Uganda being “the most opposite you can get of Oregon,” it seems a good place to start, she said.
Overton said she has chosen to pour her energy wholeheartedly into her upcoming trip. Working three jobs during this past summer, Overton raised about three-quarters of the $5,000 it will cost her to travel to Ntenjeru, and she hopes to receive the remainder in the form of donations from businesses and acquaintances in her hometown. Officially accepted into the program over winter vacation, she jumped headfirst into the University’s Swahili 102 class. It was a challenge, she said, because her previous experience with the language was limited to hearing a couple words in Disney’s “The Lion King”, she said.
Ultimately, Overton, who plans to triple major in international studies, family and human services, and public policy, planning and management, said she plans to use her majors to secure a job with an international aid organization such as UNICEF or the United States Agency for International Development.
Asked what was a must-have for her trip, Overton laughingly replied, “peanut butter and a mosquito net.”
In a slightly different way, junior Rachel Rothgery, a recent transfer student, is continuing her enthusiasm for activism in Africa and around the world at the University. She is currently heading up a campaign to raise money to build a school in Sierra Leone, a war-torn nation in West Africa, through the organization Free the Children.
Rothgery hopes to begin the campaign as soon as possible. Her goal is to raise $6,000, which will cover the cost of building and maintaining the school.
Rothgery and her four potential recruits from the University will most likely be collecting money through pledges. She hopes to have the $6,000 raised by the end of spring term.
Sierra Leone is coming to the end of a ten-year civil war, where children were sometimes used as soldiers. Building schools is one of the first steps to creating a secure environment, Rothgery said.
“If the children can’t feel safe and needed, then peace won’t be lasting,” Rothgery said. Through her passion for activism, Rothgery has spent time in several developing countries in and effort to provide what aid she could. When she was 17 years old, she made her first trip to Africa through the Free the Children organization. After that she attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where she did fundraising for Free the Children. This first attempt met with startling success. She and a small group of her peers at Oberlin raised $12,000, she said, double that of their original goal.
Before transferring to the University, Rothgery took a year off school, during which she traveled to Guatemala and volunteered in a small orphanage, and to Bolivia, where she volunteered with a school.
The International Business and Economics Club (IBEC) and its microfinance group have taken a more administrative approach to activism in developing African nations. Group member Michael Schoenfelder explained that IBEC is a club that breaks into smaller groups that then develops, implements and studies both business and economic projects internationally. The IBEC mission is to allow students to study the countries of the world through projects and research. The microfinance group takes this mission one step further, saying they wish to help alleviate the world’s poverty.
Group founder Parrish Nishimura said that the group is in its final planning stages of executing its own aid program in a developing country. The exact location where the project will be set is yet to be determined, though they had originally planned on having it in Senegal, a coastal West African nation. Nishimura went on to say that their program will use very small loans – anywhere from $5 to $50 – to be given to individuals within the developing country, who will then use the money to help spur their own small businesses. These loans are small by U.S. standards, but they can work. Banker and economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his microfinance efforts in Bangladesh, giving small loans to poor people in the Indian Subcontinent.
IBEC’s program’s goal is to achieve sustainable, long-term aid and progress. To do this successfully, Nishimura said, the group will be partnering with an existing aid organization in the area, then providing them the funding to distribute loans. This ensures no cultural customs are violated.
The second goal of the project is to study the effects of providing aid to a developing country. The group would like to determine what sort of aid works best in different areas and why. They then hope to refine the aid-giving process.
“We’ll be providing aid with business savvy,” Schoenfelder said.
Schoenfelder said that the group plans to find a partner aid organization within a month. At that point they will begin fundraising for loan money. Their initial goal is $2000, but once this program begins to take hold, they hope to grow and receive money from other avenues.
For more information on Global Volunteer Network Uganda Program, visit www.volunteer.org.nz/uganda/
Those who wish to get involved with Rothgery’s campaign can either contact Rothgery at [email protected] or learn more about the Free the Children organization at www.freethechildren.com
For information on this or any other IBEC project visit lcb.uoregon.edu/ibec/ or contact [email protected]