University of Minnesota Moments: One of Glamour's TOp 10 College Women in the Nation

Transcription

[Announcer]: I’m Rick Moore with the University of Minnesota Moments. Glamour magazine recently named Rebecca Mitchell, a senior in the U’s College of Liberal Arts, as one of its top 10 college women in the nation for 2006. Mitchell, along with nine other students from across the United States, received the distinction in the magazine’s October issue and is featured in “Brilliant, brave and under 25!” An honors student, she says the award recognizes her academic achievements and volunteer work with orphans in Kenya.

[Mitchell]: I just went over on my own through a program called Experiential Learning International. And I worked in an orphanage and the general hospital there, and it really hit me just how terribly women were treated in that society; both by their husbands, by the government. I mean, in Kenya it’s getting better but it certainly is nowhere near the way it is in the United States. Especially with the female orphans; I witnessed them being abused by one of their caretakers and went through a long process of, sort of, drafting up new guidelines towards insuring that the employees couldn’t do that sort of thing again and that there were actions they could take if they were abusing the children. And just after having that experience I realized how effective even college students could be.

[Moore]: Mitchell’s volunteer experience led her to found the Student Project Africa Network organization.

[Mitchell]: It’s called the Student Project Africa Network and we are a non-profit pending -we’re about to get our 505 C-3 status- that networks student volunteers and community organizations and NGOs working in East Africa.