What’s an ROA Part I: Andrea

December 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 am

We’re doing a running series on the OCC blog profiling some folks we like to call the Regional Outreach Ambassadors (ROAs). The ROAs are students all around the country who stepped up before the challenge and agreed to focus less on earning points for their own campus, and more on helping other campuses organize to fight poverty.

First up is Andrea:

Hey Guys, this is Andrea Cloninger. I’m the ROA for Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana.

I currently attend Winthrop University in SC, studying human nutrition and chemistry. I am working on becoming a Registered Dietitian and then probably graduate school for international nutrition and food policy. What do I want to do with all this? End world hunger of course!

For my humanizing side, I love cake, the color red, my family, everything Hello Kitty, books, friends, water, the RedSox, FAMILY FORCE 5(greatest band ever), traveling, staying home, politics, birthdays, and attempting to be artistic. I am a national fitness competitor and a former secret agent wannabe.

My hometown is Denver, NC. It’s about 20 minutes from Charlotte and I love it! I have been all over the world, but there is no place like home. That might be because I have the greatest family of all time. We travel together and share the same passion for ending poverty and making a difference in people’s lives.

I’ve spent several summers in Africa, mainly South Africa and Mozambique. I work with Samaria Mission doing various relief outreaches. I have stayed everywhere from modern cities to slums to national geographic-ish villages. I love to meet new people and explore different cultures.

The most recent trip I took to South Africa really opened my eyes to the political approach that needs to be taken when combating AIDS, poverty, and hunger.

When the president of the country with the highest level of HIV infection says he does not believe HIV causes AIDS, and the Health Minister does not believe in using antiretroviral medicine, and the former deputy president claims it is okay that he slept with an HIV positive women because he “showered afterward” – that’s when you wake up and realize that you cannot just donate money and make these problem go away. Something bigger needs to be done.

That’s where all of you come in. YOUR voices put these issues on government agenda. We’ve already made such a huge difference. I love it! Keep up the good work!

I look forward to meeting all of you in January. Until then, rack up those points!

If you need help with anything OCC related, your ROA is the first person to turn to, and will likely have a better answer than you’ll find anywhere else. So if you aren’t already, make sure you are in good touch with them!

Awareness Challenge Runner-up 1

November 20th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

This is probably one of the coolest videos that has been submitted to the ONE Campus Challenge, but it wasn’t quite enough to win last week’s challenge (issue awareness).

What you’re looking at is the student section at a Hofstra basketball game.  It is a pretty impressive stunt, but we felt that it didn’t quite illustrate extreme poverty as clearly as Winthrop’s flag display.  Still, it’s good for 2,500 points.

Glover’s “Lethal Weapon” – the ONE band

November 19th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

Last month, John Edwards and Danny Glover visited the Blackmon Road Community, one of the poorest communities in South Carolina. The residents of Blackmon Road, about twenty families containing 75-100 people, are living in third world conditions. They live without indoor plumbing, bathrooms or showers, without trash pick-up, without paved roads, and without street lights – effectively, without the basic material necessities we have come to expect in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Edwards and Glover addressed issues of poverty, both domestic and abroad. Both were “banded” and excited to see the Winthrop student body involved with ONE.

Winthrop Wins

November 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

Last week’s challenge was to create the best visual display to create awareness of ONE’s issues.  We received a large number of very impressive submissions, but we felt that Winthrop University did the best job of creating a display that was effective and inspiring.

They planted 300 flags in the ground along a high-traffic walk way on campus.  Each flag represented 10,000 Tanzanian children who are not in school thanks to debt relief which let Tanzania eliminate school fees.

Congratulations to Winthrop!  They are the lowest ranked school to have won a weekly challenge (previously ranked 50).  It just goes to show you that anyone can take home buckets of points and move up in the rankings. 10,000 points will move them up about 10 spots.

But they aren’t the only ones who are going to be getting points for this last week’s challenge. There were a fair number of schools that did amazing awareness projects, and we are going to give 4 runners up 2,500 points each for their good work.  Make sure to check back here throughout the week to see their great projects and to get some ideas about how you can increase awareness on your campus.