A team of Duke students has won $25,000 from the Pepsi Refresh Project to carry out a project idea they hope will inspire an entire generation of high school students to work together to fight poverty through service learning and social entrepreneurship.
Through their nonprofit organization ChangEducate, the team will use the funds to film, produce, and distribute a DVD-based educational curriculum that educates high school students on the causes of poverty, while empowering them to begin their own grassroots projects to help alleviate poverty domestically and internationally.
“ChangEducate will give high school students a much deeper understanding of poverty, both locally and on a global scale,” said the team members, which includes Anjali Bhatia, Charlotte Pinkard, Ben Dean, Lori Vogt, and Neha Limaye who completed fieldwork in Uganda last summer through the Duke Global Health Institute. “We hope to make youth much more aware of the issues surrounding poverty, and how they are interconnected with education, health, and development. These topics are essential for understanding our world, but they are rarely covered in high school classrooms.”
As part of a one-year pilot program, the students plan to distribute the video DVD with lesson plans in Durham and Chapel Hill next spring for implementation during the 2011-2012 school year. The feedback they gain from small focus groups made up of teachers, students and parents will inform their plans to distribute the DVD and curriculum nationally the following year.
The DVD will also feature the stories of students who developed their own sustainable projects to combat poverty. The students said “the method of ‘students teaching students’ will show them that they too can make a difference, something that goes beyond just service hours or donations that are the norm for high school students.”
Students will work closely with Duke’s Program in Education to develop a curriculum and service-learning lesson plans that align with national standards for social studies education.
The ChangEducate project idea originated as one of thousands of ideas submitted nationwide for the Pepsi Refresh Project. After several months of online voting, ChangEducate ranked among the top ten projects. The Pepsi competition funds the top ten ideas at several different funding levels to turn their ideas into reality.
“Our team could not have accomplished what we have without the immense help we received from the Duke community,” said the group. “Our collaborations with Duke’s Program in Education and the Fuqua School of Business proved invaluable, providing experienced advice and feedback every step of the way. Of course, with the support of the Duke population, we received the votes we needed to win the Pepsi Refresh Everything competition. We are so grateful to all the students, faculty, friends, and family who faithfully voted for us everyday.”
