Steps working on next international project
Leaders of two nonprofit organizations started by USU students, Steps and Effect International, hope to raise $25,000 next semester to build schools in India where there are more than 300 million people who can’t read.
“There’s about 770 million illiterate people in the whole world,” Casey Allred, founder and director of Effect International, said. “Right now India holds about 40 percent of those statistics.”
Keenan Nuehring, co-founder of Steps, said the number of illiterate people in India is equivalent to the entire population of the United States.
“In India there are 304 million people that can’t read,” Nuehring said. “There’s 311 million people in the United States, and to think 304 million people in India can’t read — almost the entire population of the U.S.”
Nuehring said Effect International has already built one school and raised funds for another. He said by partnering with Steps they plan on raising $25,000 for a third school with donations from students at USU.
“For $25,000 they can build a school,” Nuehring said. “They can buy the land, get teachers, principals, uniforms and school supplies, and run the school for a year.”
Allred said the new school will provide educations for 250 children. He said the main focus of Effect International is to build primary schools.
“We go into an area and we start out with the primary education,” Allred said. “Then we will follow them all through high school. So we will actually build or add on or make it big enough so that we can continue with education all the way through.”
Allred said the U.S. dollar goes a long way in India. He said $25 will pay for an entire year of schooling there for one student.
Helping build schools in India isn’t the first time Steps has helped raise money to send overseas. Nuehring said about $17,000 was raised by Steps and the Japan Club last year after the tsunami and earthquakes hit Japan.
Originally Steps was going to start this semester, said Jason Russell, ASUSU student advocate and co-founder of Steps. He said he planned on using the summer to organize and structure the organization, but when the tsunamis hit Japan, he and Nuehring decided to launch Steps early.
Russell said the money was sent to the Japanese Red Cross to be used at their discretion for tsunami relief.
He said some of the money was raised by at a Japanese culture carnival with games, music and a Japanese fashion show. He said a majority of the money was raised by shaving or braiding a steps pattern into participants’ hair.
Students would see people walking around campus with steps in their hair, Russell said, and they would ask what the haircut was for and learn about the fundraiser on campus. In the three days the group spent shaving and braiding, Steps raised roughly $4,500.
Nuehring said the fundraising campaign for India will be different from the one for relief in Japan, because Steps will also spread awareness as well as ask for donations.
“It was really easy for us for Japan, because it was all over the news,” Nuehring said. “People knew what was going on in Japan, we could literally say ‘Do you have a dollar for Japan?’ and people would automatically assume it was going to tsunami relief.”
We can’t walk up to people and ask for a dollar for India without people asking what happened in India, Nuehring said.
“We can’t just say ‘Oh, illiteracy happened in India,'” he said.
Nuehring said Steps was originally designed to help the local community. He said plans changed when the disasters hit and the group has decided to continue its focus on international aid, for now.
“Originally Steps was based off of an idea of finding families in the valley that have children with illnesses — usually cancer and that kind of thing — that are struggling financially to find relief for them,” Nuehring said.
Nuehring said members of Steps have considered splitting the organization into three groups, each with a specific focus. He said one group would focus on helping the local community, while the other two groups would focus on helping nationally and internationally.
For now though, he said, the primary focus is international relief.
– chris.w.lee@aggiemail.usu.edu