Nourish International

People want to be actors, not objects, and the current configuration does not encourage college students to be actors in reducing poverty. Students are encouraged to write letters to congress, “get the word out” to their friends and family, and contribute money to good causes, but they are not encouraged to be fully fledged change makers. Students want to do more and they can do more.People are bombarded with images of dying children on infomercials all their lives, but many people never felt like they can personally do anything to help beyond sending a contribution to the agencies sponsoring the commercials. At UNC, a group of friends and I realized that we could do something tangible by generating money on campus and using the money to fuel organizations already doing great work to alleviate poverty. We became involved with an organization called Hunger Lunch, and helped raise $8,000 through lunch sales to invest in a micro-irrigation system in a Bolivian village. Then, we unleashed ourselves on world poverty. We implemented Hold’em for Hunger, a charity poker tournament which generated $6,000. We started holding dances to generate more income. We applied for a collaboration fund and started incorporating Duke students into our team. With more money, we could invest in more projects and accommodate more students. With more students, we could generate more money and thus fund more development projects, and so on and so forth. Every part of our operation became a positive feedback loop. We suddenly realized that there was something much larger going on than Hunger Lunch. We changed the name to Nourish International as we realized that we could create a network of university chapters to do more. Today, Nourish has launched 4 chapters with 3 more on the way in the immediate future. We are building a movement of college students to reduce world poverty through business ideas.