(The Beacon)
By Kurt Berning, Guest Commentary -- kurt@globalade.org
Last winter about 200 University of Portland students decided to invest their excess meal points in a far nobler cause than Naked Juices and Kit Kat Bars. In one week, these students raised 25,000 meal points for Global ADE, a non-profit with the mission of strengthening education in Cambodia by partnering with existing organizations to fund sustainable and innovative education projects.
These generous donations will be put toward a fundraiser dinner April 20. Donors will buy a ticket to the dinner for $50 and 100 percent of that money will go to Global ADE. This is because the points will cover the cost of food, catering and a few auction items.
Don't have $50 to spend on a dinner? Talk to your parents, or a faculty member you know might be interested. Send them to up.edu, where they can find a news story about Global ADE and a link to purchase tickets. And keep an eye out for the Global ADE website, which will be launched in the next two weeks. Once again, students have the chance to do their part in making the dream to improve education in Cambodia a reality.
Why Cambodia? It's a perfect mix of opportunity and need. Only 25 percent of students make it to sixth grade in rural areas and a few dollars go a long way toward alleviating the problem. Ten dollars can fund uniforms for a student for a year of school, $30 can buy a bike for a student to ride to school, $2,000 would provide a quality teacher for rural students and $8,000 could build a sorely needed middle school classroom. Be part of this real movement to improve education in Cambodia and help us make this April 20 Fundraising Dinner a success.
Kurt Berning is a junior finance and operations and technology management major and can be contacted at kurt@globalade.org.
