Meet the 2012 Fellows

FAC Internacional: Train the Trainer Carolina Center
for Public Service
Santiago Beltran ’13
Gautam Sanka ’14
Caleb Dagenhart ’14
Jamie Ruiz ’12
Webster Hughes ’14
Campus Y

El Fondo de Apoyo Comunitario Internacional (FAC), the first microfinance intiative in Central America’s largest urban slum, La Limonada seeks to empower community members through access to financial services, entrepreneurship education and relational support. Jaime, Gautam, Webster and Santiago are now working to expand FAC's work by involving clients in operations through a Train the Trainer program. The project would allow FAC to hire program graduates to help market services, teach classes and pay what they have learned forward. This program will allow FAC to meet its mission on a greater level in support of upward mobility and poverty alleviation for all involved.

Healthy Girls Save the World
Camille McGirt ’13
Jillian Griffith ’14
Reena Gupta ’15
Kristen Bowen ’13

Healthy Girls Save the World is an organization that provides the tools and knowledge for young girls to create and sustain a healthy and well-rounded lifestyle. Healthy Girls Save the World is a program for young girls aged 8-15 that promotes “healthy bodies, healthy minds and healthy relationships.” The core of HGSW is to educate girls on the importance of healthy eating habits, regular exercise and chronic obesity related illness prevention. Healthy Girls Save the World acts as a base to launch the potential of young girls to help them realize all that they are capable of physically and mentally. Healthy Girls Save the World also aspires to serve, build and develop young girls into powerful women that will save the world.

HOPE Cooks
Jessica Richardson ’13
Meg VanDeusen ’14
Alex Biggers ’13
Campus Y

HOPE Cooks brings together students, women and children around a weekly meal to learn from and teach each other about nutrition, exercise and staying healthy on a budget. Working at the women and children’s shelter in Chapel Hill, HOPE Cooks will build relationships, educate individuals about healthy living on a budget and provide transient, low-income populations with a sense of community by cultivating a lasting network of support. Self-empowerment through the knowledge of nutrition and resources will aid in the prevention of burdens that make people not able to stay in the workforce. This allows individuals to take charge of their health in ways that they can and use their health to sustain transitions out of homelessness.

Digital Literacy Workshops and Train-For-Teaching
in Chapel Hill
Patrick Heenan ’13
Joe Sircar ’12
TECH (Technology Education in Chapel Hill):
Campus Y

Technology Without Borders' Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship project focuses on putting self-autonomy and sustainability into a series of digital literacy community workshops. These workshops are held weekly at the Joblink Career Center on Franklin Street, in partnership with the Carolina Empowerment Fund, and the program aims to freely connect people with the resources and equipment to find employment or pursue their own interests. What better way to make the program self-sustaining than to turn the student into the teacher? By promoting a cyclic program, the workshops would perpetuate themselves and thereby establish a much higher degree of permanency and legitimacy among the community.