Charlen Nyangaresi: My Study Abroad Scholarship!

My name is Charlen Nyangaresi and I am a junior at the University of Minnesota, Curtis L Carlson School of Management. Currently I am a double Major in Finance and Accounting and I Plan to pursue my Masters in Business Administration and Public Policy. This last winter break I had an opportunity to study abroad in South Africa with a social Justice class. In this class, we learned about the apartheid system and its effect on South Africa today.

The course included a Service-Learning project with Afrika Tikkun, a non-governmental non-profit organization that works toward the transformation of South African communities by caring for vulnerable children and orphans in townships. Afrika Tikkun fosters empowerment by providing holistic services focused on caring for children ranging from one year to 19 years of age, as well as their guardians. We were able to work with township youth projects and other community needs as identified by Afrika Tikkun leaders in the Cape Town district of Delft.

Volunteering at a township was a very humbling experience. I was very inspired by the resilient men and women who woke up in poverty every day. In this trip, I found myself slowly turning into someone who realized the privileges I had. I learned that waking up every day to a meal, bed and clothing did not happen to everybody. I have come out of this trip as a passionate person, who wants to work as a social agent to make sure that no child in this world goes hungry again. Poverty was created by mankind and it can be eliminated, and this trip is my first step towards helping me become a better citizen of the world. Thank you HonorSociety.org for giving me a chance to experience this life changing trip.