PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Eleven Brown students were selected to attend this year’s Clinton Global Initiative University, which took place March 21-23, 2014, at Arizona State University in Phoenix. The annual meeting brings together students, national youth organizations, topic experts, and celebrities to discuss solutions to pressing global issues.

Each student who attends must make a Commitment to Action, an initiative to improve a specific community in the world. The Brown students will be working on a variety of projects as their Commitments to Action:

• Jasmina Suko ’14: Care For Yourself (C4U) promotes reproductive health and accessibility of medical services among the youth of Bosnia and Herzegovina by uniting medical students and medical professionals via street classrooms, where they will hold lectures on contraception, STIs and cervical cancer prevention.
• Jayson Marwaha ’14, Yao Liu ’17, David Liu ’17: MED International uses technology to put medical equipment back into service in under-resourced hospitals. Having repaired $300,000 worth of medical equipment in Zanzibar, Tanzania, MED aims to expand to seven more hospitals in 2014.
• Nathaniel Lawrence ’14: Credito Social provides affordable credit to favela communities in Brazil through a social investment platform. This online platform allows Brazilian microbusinesses to crowdfund their own microloans and allows investors of any size in the United States to find socially responsible investments.
• Taylor Lanzet ’15, Anna Plumlee ’15: The Brown Market Shares Program (BMSP) is a student-run, campus-based food distribution program connecting the Brown community with regional producers. Their next goal is to connect with other colleges and universities across the country also running similar programs in order to create a national network of sustainable food systems-based programs.
• Shayna Zema ’15: A Light Unto Nations combats extreme poverty and climate change in Oaxaca, Mexico, through sustainable community programming to achieve self-sufficiency and improve the local economy. They aim to provide homes in Oaxaca with solar energy sources and skills training for ecological and social sustainability.
• Andrew Kaplan ’15, Sam Gilman ’15: Common Sense Action (CSA) aims to build on their existing work of educating millenials about public policy through their 20 national chapters by connecting representatives and candidates to the millennials in their communities through a new Candidate Scorecard initiative.
• Chemtai Langat ’17: Peer to Peer for Samburu will empower girls from the Samburu community in Kenya through a mentorship program that links young girls from the Samburu’s top girls’ high schools. This collaboration will provide an avenue to teach sex education and provide inspiration and exposure in the rural Samburu community.