A group of 27 undergrads makes up this year’s cohort of Global Service Scholars. The students, who are the third group of scholars, will be spending four weeks volunteering at an entrepreneurial school in Paraguay, a woman-owned farm in Nepal and at South African youth serving agencies and health clinics and working on environmental conservation and women’s empowerment projects.
The Global Service Scholars program launched in 2017 as an initiative of UCI’s School of Social Ecology, the UCI Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation and the Living Peace Foundation. It offers students an opportunity to practice compassion as volunteers across the world and nearly all expenses, including travel and lodging, included. Those chosen to participate must have completed the online “science and practice of compassion” course and a compassion seminar.
In its first year, 19 students were chosen to be Global Service Scholars. They spent four weeks learning and serving as volunteers at a women’s prison in Peru, at health clinics and schools in Ghana and at an elephant rehabilitation camp in Thailand.
The Global Service Scholars program makes up one part of the Blum Center’s Compassion Action Project, which aims to promote compassion within the university and become a global resource for programs and policies to build a more compassionate world.
The 2019 Global Service Scholars and their majors:
- Edith Avila, urban studies and public health policy
- Emily Cadena, criminology, law and society and social ecology
- Samentha Carpio, social ecology and psychology
- Bruce Duong, neurobiology
- Krisha Lantin, psychology and social behavior and public health policy
- Isabelle Lee, psychology and social behavior
- Helay Liang, psychology and social behavior
- Daisy Licon, biological sciences and psychology and social behavior
- Jazzmyn Luna, environmental science
- Uyen Mai, public health sciences
- Ashly Mendoza, environmental science and policy
- Evelyn Mendoza, psychology and social behavior
- Camille Morfin, biological sciences
- Isabella Mudge, environmental science and policy
- Christy Muok, anthropology
- Valentine Narksuwan, biological sciences and psychology
- Daniel Palafox, urban studies and criminology, law and society
- Erica Reyes, environmental science and policy
- Nancy Rivas, criminology, law and society and psychology and social behavior
- Ana Ruvalcaba, psychology and social behavior
- Miah Sabas, psychology and social behavior
- Jocelyn Sanchez, criminology, law and society and psychology and social behavior
- Ava Shakib-Cocks, psychology and social behavior
- Janet Song, civil engineering and math
- Celine Ton, biological sciences
- Nia Wyman, undeclared/undecided
- Vanessa Yang, international studies
More information about the Global Service Scholars program can be found at globalservicescholars.uci.edu.