This Friday, the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) is sending five of the top student anti-poverty advocates in the United States to Kenya for a week of first-hand, hands-on experience with the people, issues and programs OCC students work to affect – and we have a new site to chronicle their adventures. Check it out, here.

We chose the five students based on their outstanding individual efforts during the 2008-9 OCC season, and also from the excellent projects they submitted on how they will use their experience in Africa to inform their OCC work during the upcoming 2009-10 season. The students are:

Bryant Shannon, from the University of Florida in Gainesville;

Melissa Boles, from Washington State University in Vancouver;

Stephanie Parrish, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor;

Steven Thai, from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa; and

Tomas Moreno, from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Learn more about the OCC, the students, and the trip through our new, interactive OCC in Kenya site.

I asked the students what aspects of the trip they were most excited about, and the overwhelming response was the African people.

“I am looking forward to meeting people affected by extreme poverty, but who have been able to come out of poverty with the help of foreign assistance such as USAID,” said Steven Thai.

“I’m most excited about meeting new, amazing people, as well as learning more about their lives. I can’t wait to hear stories from women and men that I get to talk to about what their lives are like in Kenya,” said Melissa Boles.

“I’m also pretty excited to see how everything I have learned in school and through ONE will help me relate to them,” she added. “Mostly it just doesn’t really feel real yet.”

Indeed, the purpose of the trip is to build a bridge between ONE’s grassroots advocacy campaign and the issues and programs ONE members work to affect, giving these five students first-hand knowledge they can use to help build better OCC programs across the country.

The students will share their experiences first-hand with their fellow students and all ONE members through blog entries, video journals, and Facebook and Twitter updates. You can keep up with them and send them your comments and questions on our new OCC in Kenya website, here.

-Emily Stivers