Photo by: Christine Campigotto
DU junior, Christine Campigotto, 20, was recently selected to attend the second annual International Youth Volunteerism Summit (IYVS) at Northwestern University from Feb. 22 – 25.
The student-run conference brings 55 international and American students interested in initiating global change and social entrepreneurship together with experts. The students represent more than 15 countries and 30 universities.
“We believe that better education is the missing gap between awareness and action and between ‘good intentions’ and real responsible, effective, and sustainable global change,” said summit co-chair, Page Hubben, a senior at Northwestern.
Students were selected based on submitted project proposals they developed, which they will discuss and improve during the four-day summit. At the conclusion of the summit, students are invited to submit their revised proposals in hopes of gaining IVYS’ support and money to change their proposal into action. Only two proposals will receive this award.
Campigotto, an international studies and economics double major, heard about the summit through the Graduate School of International Studies. Required to submit a two to three page development project that could realistically be implemented, she proposed a microloan financing project for townships around Cape Town, South Africa. Microloans are loans for small amounts of money that are given to individuals or businesses.
Campigotto’s project would help “encourage small businesses and entrepreneurship” within the township. During apartheid, these townships were lived in solely by blacks. When apartheid ended, educated blacks left those areas, causing a “brain drain,” said Campigotto. This left “pockets of poverty” in these townships, which she wants to improve by developing the townships themselves.
In order to compel educated people to stay in these townships. Campigotto’s project requires the businesses receiving money to stay in the townships. This way, the money goes directly to improving the impoverished areas as opposed to being taken out of the community.
Her project also incorporates a maximization of “volunteer efficiency,” which is a goal of IYVS as well. Volunteers would be “dispatched” to help if the program was implemented.
Campigotto developed the project after returning from study abroad at the University of Cape Town last quarter. She feels she wouldn’t have been able to come up with this project had she not actually experienced life there. “I don’t think I would understand the situation had I not been there,” said Campigotto.
She is looking forward to “workshopping” the proposals with peers and experts in order to develop it “into something that could actually be implemented.”
As a junior, Campigotto is unsure of whether or not she’ll apply for the IVYS support at the end of the summit. “I don’t know if I’m in the position [to actually implement the program] right now,” she said, adding, “Even if it remains hypothetical and theoretical, it is still a lesson in turning an idea into a reality.”
A Colorado native who has been skiing since she could walk, Campigotto transferred to DU from Northwestern for the international studies program during her sophomore year. She plans to graduate in June 2008, after which she hopes to “work on economic development policies in Washington, D.C.”
Sponsored by the Center for Global Engagement, a program within Northwestern’s Center for International and Comparative Studies, the IVYS is “one of the only youth global engagement events in the United States” and is “one of the most exclusive and high-demand student-run conferences in the country,” said co-chair Alex Lofton, a senior at Northwestern.
Campigotto plans to return to Africa, which she calls “gorgeous,” in the future, but says that right now it is “exciting to be continuing what I learned there [during study abroad]” through this summit.
