Kuyper Hosts Global Awareness and Advocacy Day
For the students of Kuyper professors Kelli Hoffman, Jen Colin and Marc Andreas, applying in-classroom learning to the world outside those four walls is essential. And a special event in early February helped them do just that.
Global Awareness and Advocacy Day takes place once a year and is the culmination of a semester’s worth of work for the students who participate, giving them the opportunity to share what they’ve been learning with fellow students, faculty and staff.
“It’s a great way to highlight some of the work that students have already done,” said Marc Andreas, Professor of Business Leadership and the program’s director.
This year, four students – one Social Work major and three Business Leadership majors – presented their findings to members of the Kuyper community gathered in the Vos Chapel.
The business leadership students all took Andreas’ economics class this fall, where everyone chose a country to compare with the United States, economically speaking, for their final projects.
Allesha Cooper looked at the inner workings of Jamaica, while Travis Jones and Richard Major teamed up to dive-deep into Iceland. 
“I chose Jamaica because I was born there and spent the first 13 years of my life there,” said Cooper. “I just wanted to learn more about my country.”
The social work students, on the other hand, were part of Kuyper’s international social work class and chose a particular global social and human rights issue to focus on for their final projects.
This included background information on their country of interest, ways their chosen issue affects that country and how it violates global human rights standards.
Jen Colin, social work program director and assistant professor, described the goal of the project: “It’s a chance for students to put their social work hat on and analyze a particular issue affecting a particular country. But ultimately, it allows them to put forth their proposed solutions and the steps they would take to get there.”
Meika DeVries analyzed Thailand’s struggle to combat sex trafficking, particularly the online exploitation of children, saying that a solution would be multifaceted and include participation from international government as well as nonprofit organizations.
After each of the presentations were completed, each student took time to answer questions from the audience.
