Africa Trip Winner Profile: Melissa Boles
Melissa Boles, a rising junior at Washington State University in Vancouver, has faced more than her share of obstacles in advocating for ONE and Campus Challenge. Yet her determination and spirit have shined through, and helped earn her place on the first-ever OCC trip to Africa this summer.
Melissa is pursuing a degree in Social Science with an emphasis on Political Science and Anthropology at WSU-Vancouver. She has spent some time in Mexico with her church, and is considering joining the Peace Corps after she graduates. Eventually, she seeks a career in nonprofit work.
A member since hearing about ONE at a Coldplay concert in 2005, Melissa took the initiative to learn about and sign up for Campus Challenge through the OCC website right when the program launched in 2007. Since then, she has worked diligently to mobilize her campus around ONE’s issues, and does so without much support from a spread-out and often politically-disengaged campus.
But throughout the discouragements she has endured, Melissa’s campus still placed in the Top 100 schools in the country (out of about 2,400) by the end of the regular OCC season.
“I’m passionate enough about ONE to take on all that comes with running a club on campus by yourself,” Melissa wrote in her trip application. “Emails, scheduling meetings, tabling, and the frustrating outcome of others not really being interested…First-hand experiences and stories are what touch the hearts of others. I feel this trip would help me to really be able to do that; to touch the hearts of others.”
Melissa worked tirelessly in our individual actions competition in order to be considered for a spot on the Africa trip, accumulating tens of thousands of “individual action” points just in the two short weeks open for individual point submissions. Her subsequent application for the trip was both thorough and outstanding.
You can read her application here.
Congratulations to Melissa and the other four Africa trip winners!
-Emily Stivers
TAGS: Africa Trip Melissa Boles, Uncategorized