News Release

Local angles: Cary, Goldsboro, Greensboro

Class of ’38 gifts fund projects in Ghana, Honduras, Uganda, Tanzania

CHAPEL HILL – Four University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students will travel this summer to complete self-designed study projects funded by endowments to Carolina.

Junior Jonathan Copp of Cary will receive $3,450 through the Witten Travel Award, which is funded by an endowment of class of 1938 members Charles and Martha Witten of Columbia, S.C. He will travel to Uganda to establish a sustainable production facility for rural peanut farmers. 

Juniors Natosha Correro of Goldsboro, Blaire Evans of Cary, and Angela Vandegrift of Greensboro will receive $3,500 each through the Class of 1938 Summer Study Abroad Fellowships. Their projects include teaching in Ghana, studying health care in Honduras, and working with people affected by HIV and AIDS in Tanzania.  

Since 1975, an endowment created by Carolina’s Class of 1938 has annually funded independent projects abroad by Carolina students. Class members, who lived through and lost friends to World War II, created the endowment to help foster international understanding and promote world peace. The Witten Travel Award, which is made annually to the first alternate of the regular selection process who becomes a Class of 1938 Fellow, has been given since 1992.

Selection for the awards is based on quality of applicants’ proposals, financial need and seriousness of academic purpose.

Copp, a biology and chemistry major, will work in Uganda with the Full Belly Project, a nonprofit organization that designs and delivers simple agricultural machines to people in developing countries. He will establish a sustainable production facility and distribute peanut-shelling machines to farmer cooperatives, completing research on the impact of the machines. 

“(The machines are) an affordable technology that will drastically decrease the hours spent by rural farmers – mostly women – that are currently required to shell peanuts for sale in the market,” Copp wrote in his proposal.

Copp is a member of the Carolina service group Nourish International, assistant director of public relations for the Ski and Snowboard Club, member of UNC Heels club soccer team, practice assistant for the women’s varsity soccer team and a volunteer at UNC Hospitals.

Correro, a nursing major, will work as a nurse intern in Choluteca, Honduras, to provide culturally relevant healthcare to underserved populations by organizing and implementing a women’s health and family planning program.

“The goal of this program is to make resources and information available to women in Honduras so that they may make well informed decision about their own health and the health of their families,” Correro wrote.

Correro is a member of the Association of Nursing Students and the Student Health Action Coalition.

Evans, an elementary education and biology major, will participate in an internship with Global Volunteer Network in Ho, Ghana, where she will teach a class, design a curriculum for a youth center that will enhance students’ understanding of healthy behaviors, create an interactive learning environment and teach sustainable development practices.

“Service to the community is at the core of this summer experience and at the heart of the youth center’s mission, and thus it is the opportunity I have dreamed of,” Evans wrote.

Evans is a campus resident adviser and has been a board member for the Baptist Student Union’s Missions Team since 2004.

Vandegrift, a biology and psychology major, will travel to Moshi, Tanzania, with an organization called Cross-Cultural Solutions to work with people affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“As a premedical student hoping to become a globally-minded doctor, I am eager to have the firsthand experience of caring for patients affected by this tragic pandemic,” Vandegrift wrote.

Vandegrift is social chairwoman of the Alpha Epsilon Delta pre-dental honors fraternity, a volunteer at UNC Hospitals, and a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, Carolina Students for Life and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
 
Note: Copp, Correro, Evans and Vandegrift can be reached at copp@email.unc.edu, correro@email.unc.edu, jevans@email.unc.edu, and avandegrift@unc.edu, respectively.

News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589