After spending a week in Boston training at the Oxfam America headquarters, junior Megan Whitacre founded a student chapter of Oxfam at Ball State this year.
"Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that works with over 90 countries in the world helping to create sustainable development and foreign aid," said Whitacre, a political science major.
With 24 members, Ball State's chapter of Oxfam America has already hosted an event and is planning several more. This weekend, they will be hosting "Sow the Seed" on the tailgating field from 9 a.m. to noon before the football game. In support of World Food Day, Oxfam will encourage tailgaters to paint a banner of the world with their fingerprints. In addition, they will have participants sign postcards to send to Sen. Evan Bayh, urging him to support the Global Food Security Act.
At the beginning of the year, the group held a photo petition, in which supporters could take a picture with a call-to-action sign that said, "I support a global strategy to fight poverty."
Whitacre got involved with social justice issues after high school when she took a year off before college to get involved with AmeriCorps. She volunteered at a preschool and a nonprofit medical clinic in Raleigh, N.C.
"In that experience, I came to realize the importance of policy in the world and in nonprofit work, and global work really," Whitacre said.
Colleen Wiley, a sophomore elementary education major and Oxfam member, said she got her start on social justice issues in her Honors 189 class last semester. Her section, taught by Brent Blackwell, was focused on global politics and issues.
"That class really helped open up my eyes, as well as many others in the club were in the class last semester," Wiley said. "It helped us to realize that we, the United States, are a lot more involved in the global economy than we might have realized beforehand."
Although the issues discussed in the class and in Oxfam do not directly relate to Wiley's major, she said it is still important for her to learn about them.
"I think it's important as an education major to understand what's happening in the world around. That way, I can unbiasly show my students what's happening in the world," Wiley said. "And I can help to bring peace into my classroom, even if I can't affect the whole world."
Wiley said before her experience in the honors class, she didn't know much about global politics.
"On a college campus, it's really easy to get shut off from the world," Wiley said. "I know a lot of times, I feel like I have no idea what's going off this campus. And so it's really important to get involved in a social group in general, but especially one that's about promoting a better life for people."
With a strong background in social justice issues, Whitacre applied for and was accepted to the Change Leader Program last year. This program allowed her to work directly with the Oxfam organization. She trained in Boston with 49 other people from across the nation to learn how to run a campaign on a college campus.
Every year, Oxfam works on three campaigns, and each campus organization chooses to address one. The three 2010 campaigns are Climate Change; Right to Know, Right to Decide; and Aid Reform, according to the Oxfam America website. The Ball State chapter has chosen to focus on the Aid Reform Campaign.
"This year we will be doing a lot of advocacy and education on aid reform and what that means for the U.S., international communities and the International Monetary Fund," Whitacre said. "Specifically we're going to be pushing for the Global Food Security Act, which is in the Senate. So we'll be lobbying Mike Pence on that bill."
Whitacre explained that Oxfam gives students the opportunity to help better their community, and even the world.
"There are so many times that we hear things on the news, and we don't really know what to do," Whitacre said. "And it's our kind of organizations that help you realize that you can make a difference, and you can help. I think that's something that students don't really realize; that it's so easy to make a difference."
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