Last year nine USC students traveled to the east coast of Africa to demonstrate how their writing abilities could help small businesses and nonprofits -
• a medical school with a
one-room library that provides health care for local residents every week
• a business plan to obtain computers and provide training for people who care for AIDS orphans
• a business plan to create mosquito nets that prevent malaria for a sewing cooperative
• a grant proposal to partner with a not-for-profit agency in the production of a juice drink.
“For the first time, I realized you don’t have to come with a big checkbook or a box of goods,” said junior Hillary Buckner, 19, a business administration major. “But come with the idea of bringing your experience back home so you can spread awareness.”
“I see learning as most beneficial when we can dive in and experience [it] firsthand,” Buckner said. “You truly learn more.”
For a decade now, USC Marshall Schol of Business Professor Sandra Chrystal has taken her students in Advanced Writing for Business out of the classroom and into the neighborhood to help nonprofits and small businesses as part of the USC Community Based
Learning Collaborative.
That’s where USC Civic and Community Relations introduced her to Malena Ruth, president of the African Millennium Foundation.
Ruth suggested Chrystal take her class to Africa to see how the students’ skills could benefit real businesses - and real people - half a world away.
Students in future writing classes will be asked to consider following up on these projects.
“It’s just amazing,” Ruth said. “Any person in the developed world can be of service. They may seem like small things. But mosquito nets? That thrills me. Almost 3,000 a day die because there are no nets.
"I do know that I, along with my classmates, have made a difference," said 21-year-old Einy Paul, a senior business major from Norway. “But because we have shown that it is possible to use our business knowledge
to offer help to others.”
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