Students hungry for service
For a donation of $5, students and community members can have an evening of food, a performance by the African Student Association and presentations raising awareness of the need for sustainable systems around the world at the annual Hunger Banquet.
Students Together Ending Poverty is hosting the event at 7 p.m. Feb. 19 in the Taggart Student Center Ballroom.
“Any student that comes to the Hunger Banquet can attest for how powerful it can be,” said Sharon Lyman, STEP director. “It’s a very humbling experience. We’re going to do some things that really bring it to home and send the message of how lucky we are.”
All proceeds from this year’s event will go to SeeeMe, a nonprofit organization with roots in Logan. Bill Grenney was a professor of civil and environmental engineering at USU when he and several students formed a chapter of Engineers Without Borders in 2004. A few years later, he started the Institute for Sustainable Economics, Education and Engineering, or SeeeMe.
Grenney and team members travel to Uganda and implement sustainable systems in schools, orphanages and rural villages. Some of their ongoing projects include holding women’s health seminars, making fertility bracelets, providing clean water, installing solar power, making feminine hygiene kits and distributing recreation equipment in schools, villages and orphanages.
Sonia Manual-Dupont, a professor at USU and SeeeMe volunteer, will present Wednesday night. She hopes students will see the importance of implementing these sustainable programs.
“Some of these organizations get people to go do things and it makes them feel good, but it might not be what the community needed most,” Dupont said. “I think (students) will start to see how all of that comes together and how sometimes you’ll have a great idea, and you get there and realize that there are so many more basic needs that have to be met.”
Members of Engineers Without Borders, an organization with a chapter on campus, will also be in attendance on Wednesday, giving a presentation on cleaning water using a sand-filtration system.
Laurie McNeill, a professor at USU and EWB club advisor, said there is a history of organizations trying to help developing countries without using systems that are appropriate for the community, such as building a school without trained teachers.
“We want to put in some technology or approach to solve a problem that makes sense to the local community that is an appropriate level of technology and cost,” McNeill said. “If you don’t consider those things, your project will fail.”
Maegan Kasteler, a sophomore majoring in public relations who traveled to Uganda with the organization last summer, said it was important to her that the money she donates goes directly to the people who need it most, which is why she chose SeeeMe.
“I did a lot of research on different groups and some of them seemed kind of shady,” Kasteler said. “The thing about SeeeMe is that it is purely nonprofit, which is something that I really loved.”
Kasteler said most of the traveling students volunteers are USU students. Some of the schools she visited last summer had the school’s logo painted on the walls.
“The kids all say, ‘We want to travel to the U.S. and go to Utah State for college,'” she said. “I take great pride in being an Aggie, and it was kind of cool to see the impact we’ve had as Aggies all the way across the world in Uganda.”
But students don’t have to travel far to be part of the effort. Dupont said she hopes that, through the banquet, more students will be interested in getting involved locally.
“We’re trying to broaden our base and get some people who can do some work around here, for example, sewing sanitary pads,” she said. “We desperately need used soccer uniforms, and most parents have tons of them in their closet. We’re hoping if we get a broader base of students, we will get out into the community more.”
Students and community members in attendance on Wednesday can assemble educational materials and fertility bracelets that will be sent with volunteers this summer. Boxes are also placed around campus to donate other needed materials, such as eyeglasses, soccer balls, books and small toys.
Kasteler said her experience working with children in Uganda has taught her irreplaceable leadership skills, like patience and connecting with diverse groups of people. She continues to use them to improve her work in the Val R. Christensen Service Center as its recruitment chair.
“Getting involved with something like SeeeMe, you realize it’s bigger than you,” she said. “It’s not about gaining worldly recognition. It’s about the people in Uganda who need help. It’s about the people who don’t have water. It’s about the orphans at one of the orphanages I visited who don’t have parents … It’s not about me getting to travel. It’s not about me getting to do these amazing things. It’s about helping people who need it … It’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than any one of us.”
– manda.perkins@hotmail.com