News Release

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Local angles: Cambridge, Mass.; Mount Rainier, Md.

Distinguished young alumni honored
for international service, journalism

CHAPEL HILL - The General Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has honored a nonprofit founder and a Washington Post photographer with Distinguished Young Alumni Awards.

Rye Barcott of Cambridge, Mass., and Andrea Bruce of Mount Rainier, Md., received the awards Friday (Oct. 13) at a dinner to acknowledge their work to bring credit to the university. Barcott founded the nonprofit organization Carolina for Kibera; Bruce was honored for her photojournalism in locales such as Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans.

"The remarkable accomplishments of many of Carolina's younger alumni are truly inspiring," said GAA President Douglas Dibbert. "The GAA delights in presenting each year the Distinguished Young Alumni Awards to those who have made our alumni and our university so proud."

Barcott, who served five years of active duty for the U.S. Marines, was a Triangle Institutes for Security Studies Millennium Fellow and a Burch Fellow at Carolina, where he earned a bachelor's degree in peace, war and defense in 2001.

For his honors thesis project in Nairobi, Kenya, Barcott studied one of the city's largest slums, Kibera, and then established a youth soccer league and cleanup teams to address the area's poverty and ethnic violence. When he returned to UNC for his senior year, Barcott and two associates founded the nonprofit organization Carolina for Kibera, which Time magazine's Global Health Summit honored in 2005 as a "hero of global health."

Carolina for Kibera has helped establish community-managed solid waste management systems, provided sports equipment to build ethno-religious cooperation and started a medical clinic and women's health center. Barcott is raising a $2 million endowment for the organization as he works toward two graduate degrees in public policy and business administration at Harvard University.

Bruce's work also began at Carolina and grew to have a global reach. She had hoped to be a reporter until a photojournalism class during her senior year set her on a different course. She graduated in 1995, worked in photography internships and took her first full-time job at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire in 1997. Bruce was named photographer of the year by the New Hampshire Press Association in 1999. She worked at The St. Petersburg Times briefly before she was tapped by The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2001.

Bruce has photographed the war-ravaged countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake devastation in Kashmir and the locked-down city of New Orleans during its Katrina crisis. She was awarded the John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club for her photographs of a young mother in Iraq who worked as a prostitute in her struggle to support her children and extended family. The White House News Photographers Association named Bruce Photographer of the Year in 2003, 2005 and 2006.

The General Alumni Association's Distinguished Young Alumni Award continues a 13-year tradition honoring alumni age 40 or younger whose achievements bring credit to the university. Among the past 34 recipients of the awards are basketball player Michael Jordan, author Kaye Gibbons and Citigroup chief financial officer Sallie Krawcheck. A complete list is available at www.alumni.unc.edu/DYA_awards. The association is a self-governed, nonprofit organization serving alumni and friends of the university.

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GAA contact: Douglas Dibbert, (919) 962-7050 or doug_dibbert@unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589 or laura_toler@unc.edu

Note: Visit http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/nov05/kiberia110205.htm for more information about Carolina for Kibera.

Photo URLs:
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/alum/DYAA/DYA06recipientBARCOTT.jpg
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/alum/DYAA/DYA06recipientBRUCE.jpg

Photo Credit: Sarah McCarty