Meet the 2011 Global SE Team

The 2011 team for the award winning Global Social Entrepreneurship (Global SE) is getting ready to travel to Bangalore for the field experience. We have been invited back by Dream a Dream and EnAble India to work/learn with them. Over the next two months you will hear about our projects and experiences in India. But for now, meet the 2011 Global SE Team and follow our journey as we work in Bangalore from May 25th to Mid July.

Rear: Kipaya, Sam and Sarah. Front: Erika

Sarah Abboud ’12
Major: Communications
Home: Ohio
Social action, I feel, when done with passion, is contagious. If I can be part of something that creates a better life for those that live in poverty, I hope others can feel they can too. I feel that being part of a program like Global SE, where social action meets entrepreneruship, I am showing my fellow peers, friends, and family how valuable social justice is in our world and how together we can create a better world for everybody.

Kipaya Kapiga ’12
Major: International Relations & French
Home: Tanzania
As an International Relations major, I’ve been exposed to a wide range of academic thought on topics in economics, political science and history. The courses I’ve taken at Wooster have been the most transformative of my life and have helped me clarify the kind of work I would like to be doing after commencement. That exposure has however, only given me a limited perspective on issues of social justice. The conversations I’ve had with professors and classmates have largely been confined to issues of governance and economic trends. For someone whose family lives in Tanzania, that can be a dis empowering perspective. Citizens of developing countries are all to often protrayed as victims of their circumstances, powerless to address the issues of poverty without the intervention of the either the government or the international community. This feeling has been intensified by the fact that I have not returned to Tanzania in many years. As fruitful as my debates have been in class, there is a large divide between what I have studied in the United States and what I have seen in Tanzania. My interested in Social Entrepreneurship has always been motivated by my desire to bridge this gap in perspective and experience.

Samuel Susanin ’13
Major: Economics
Home: Iowa

Growing up with a “silver spoon” in your mouth has so many advantages to which I was lucky enough to receive. The disadvantage of the “silver spoon” was it made me completely ignorant to the way most of the world lives. When I arrived at Wooster at the ripe and impressionable age of 18, I was looking for something which applied to economics that could open me up to the world (see how it lived) but also shatter my comfort zone. Global Social Entrepreneurship is exactly what I had been looking for. It combines economics, collaborative work, and most of all an experiential component that will BLOW UP my comfort zone. This journey I have embarked on will make me better at any profession I choose in the future because it teaches me how to identify and solve problems in environments I never even knew existed. I have enjoyed the course fully to this point and am even more looking forward to our field work this coming summer.

Erika Takeo ’13
Major: Self Designed – Global Sustainability
Home: Portland
When I chose to be a part of GSE, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. On the first day of our
seminar, I thought I was going to be surrounded by other liberal hippy types who thought in similar ways to me. Instead, I (a global sustainability studies major) was in a room with our Tanzanian economics professor, an
economics major, an IR major and a Communications major. Obviously, we are diverse in many ways. Three of us have lived in foreign countries, two of us are not American citizens. One of us wears a bowtie every day, one of us wears sweatpants. One of us is in a fraternity, one of us is the leader of a social justice organization, and one of us is web editor of the school newspaper. Just how exactly did we all end up in the same room? Reflecting on the experience thus far, I think the reason is quite simple: we are all motivated by a common goal to co-learn (with ourselves, Dream A Dream, Enable India, and others) to bring about social change. And that’s so much cooler than being in a room with people who are exactly like me. We truly are a group of independent minds, working together.