Student activists partner with non-profits to educate UNH on global poverty

One percent of the world's population gets the opportunity to attend college. The students at UNH are among that 1 percent and yet, according to several students who helped organize this week's UNH Basic Injustice event series, this campus is overrun with apathy.

For the past seven months, seven UNH students have been working with the non-profit organizations ChildVoice International, Partners in Development and Come Let's Dance to create a three-day campus engagement program that would offer UNH students a chance to learn about life in Haiti and Uganda, two of the poorest countries in the world. Several of them have been to one of the two countries and those who haven't plan to someday go.

Junior Laura Yegge said this effort rose from a common thread and mutual desire among a group of students to get their peers involved in and aware of global injustice practices.

Interactive proxy stations during the day on Wednesday and Thursday gave students the opportunity to think about the differences between poverty in Uganda and poverty in the United States, the chance to walk through a day in the life of a child soldier, and the chance to choose between food, water, clothing and shelter. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings featured speakers in the MUB.

Shane Gilbert, executive director for the non-profit, grass-roots organization Come Let's Dance, spoke Tuesday night in the Strafford Room. She said her journey started with music: first with Bono, who once asked his fans if they wanted to be part of a generation who let an entire continent die, and then with Dispatch, whom she managed for a while when she was working as a filmmaker in Hollywood. When the band played "Elias" at a show one night, Gilbert started asking questions about what language the song was in, who it was written about, where those people came from.

"I said, ‘I want to go find the guy this song is about,'" Gilbert told the audience.

She did that and more. Gilbert set off to Africa with the intention of creating a documentary and winning the Sundance Film Festival. Instead, she found a group of kids who were essentially providing for themselves and decided to make a place for them in southern Uganda. She eventually bought a house for them, adopted one of the young girls, and has been feeding, clothing, sheltering and educating orphans ever since.

CLD formed in 2006 and is based out of Nansana, Uganda, which is just outside of the capital city of Kampala. Gilbert, known as "Mama Shane" to her kids and co-workers, said she was excited to come to UNH and be a part of Basic Injustice. While she does not usually like to give talks and "recruit" volunteers, she thought this was an important opportunity to help students gain awareness of what is going on in Uganda and the world.

"You have this opportunity right now to be on a college campus and get the chance to hear about it," Gilbert said. "Soak it in and see what the world has for you before you go make your decision on who you're going to be for the rest of your life."

During the course of her presentation, Gilbert said that the "American dream" ultimately did not work out for her, and in many ways, its structure causes more harm than good.

"People live and die on decisions made in fancy offices in first-world countries," she said during her presentation.

On Wednesday afternoon, a wall of photographs and statistics was erected outside the Granite State Room, offering students the opportunity to see the dichotomy between that dream and the poverty in Uganda. At the end of the wall, there were two white boards for students to post their thoughts on. One read, "If you made less than two dollars a day, what would you put your money towards?" Answers were all over the place.

Before Wednesday evening's panel discussion, a massive game of Life was set up in the Granite State Room. Senior Abby McNamara coordinated the event, altering the spaces so that players could see some of the setbacks that occur in the daily lives of Ugandans. Corrupt police officers, pushy loan sharks and deal-making doctors were just some of the characters featured at each stage of the game.

Gilbert returned for the panel discussion and was joined by three other experts on life below the poverty line. ChildVoice International founder Conrad Mandsanger, Changing the World 101 founder Jason Connell, and Intervarsity coordinator Tom Brink each brought a different viewpoint to the table.

In trying to inform students and get them motivated to go out in the world and use their skills to help others, the panel focused its attention on explaining why countries like Uganda need sustainable aid, not hand-outs, and how young people can help.

"We think we know how to control everything in life," Brink said. "The reality of life in the rest of the world isn't like that. It's out of control."

Connell said that three things hold students back from being able to do service projects abroad: a sense of powerlessness, fear of danger and financial difficulties.

"We should get used to leaving our comfort zone and living passionately and living in the moment," Connell said. "I think the next step, once you raise awareness, is understanding that the problems we are inheriting are not solved passively. And that requires action."

Lisa Lassey of Partners in Development wrapped up the week with her presentation, Thursday night in the Strafford Room. PID has been around for 20 years and serves 6,000 people in Haiti and Guatemala with child sponsorship, medical care, housing opportunities and microcredit loans. Their major focus is sustainable development. Lassey was proud to say that the 40 homes that PID has built in Haiti all remained standing during January's devastating earthquake.