University News

Serving the World

Creighton University graduates are influencing their professions and their communities all across the United States, but some are having an impact outside of this country, even in distant corners of the world. We share a few of their stories here.

Cambodia
Steven Andrew Budd, BA’89, M.D., M.P.H., is a long way from 24th and California Streets and his native New Jersey as the founder and president of Solaid International, www.solaid.org, in Kampot, Cambodia. His organization fosters educational, development and health initiatives and has more than a dozen full- and part-time employees, as well as a number of volunteers.

After graduating from Creighton in 1989 with a degree in history, Budd sought further education, including a medical degree from University College Cork in Ireland and a master’s of public health from Tulane University. He traveled the world extensively before settling on Cambodia to begin his outreach program in 2007.

“We started out very slowly, renting a house and living in the community,” Budd says of launching Solaid. “We ran a language school out of our house — my wife, Gwenola, is from France and is a language teacher — slowly making connections within the community. We didn't want to simply go in and say, ‘We are here to help and this is what we are going to do.’ Instead, we waited to learn from the community what they themselves felt was important and needed improvement.”

Solaid’s current programs are all based upon ideas that came from local villagers: remedial education at five schools; assistance to impoverished families; and plans for addressing public health issues. Budd said the health care infrastructure in Cambodia is very basic. 

“With our minimal funds, we have been able to do quite a bit, as 100 percent of donations are put directly into the programs. Our small administration costs are all contributed by Solaid board members.” He said in the past 18 months, about 50 families have received economic grants through Solaid, and roughly 150 students are attending Solaid classes. “We have also been able to establish school libraries where before there were no books at all.”

Budd attributes the seeds of his current work to the exposure to service that he received at Creighton. “I recall going on a number of service trips at a time when the vast majority of universities did not offer these,” he recalled. “It wasn't so much the actual volunteer work being performed, but more the chance to meet people living in vastly different circumstances that propelled me along this path.” 

Dominican Republic
Education Across Borders (EAB), www.educationacrossborders.org, a nonprofit organization with a mission to “transform communities through relationship,” has many ties to members of the Creighton University community. Roger Bergman, Ph.D., director of Creighton’s Justice and Peace Studies program, currently chairs EAB’s board of directors and most of the founders were Creighton students, faculty or staff. Several of the board members are Bergman’s former students.

While at Creighton, the students had spent a semester in the Dominican Republic as part of the University’s service-learning program, now called Encuentro Dominicano. Most of them were also students in the Justice and Peace Studies program.

Their eyes were opened to the plight of people caught in a web of deprivation, who are often forgotten by their own government and the international community. Many of the students returned again and again, leaving pieces of their hearts in the small Caribbean country.

“It has been enormously gratifying to see former students take what they have learned at Creighton … and develop it into a still-young but growing nonprofit organization directly benefiting the people with whom they became friends (in the Dominican Republic),” Bergman said.

Since it incorporated in 2001, EAB has provided scholarships to junior high, high school, technical school and college students, housing, health care, and literacy and environmental assistance in the Dominican Republic, as well as service-learning immersion trips for others who want to form bonds of solidarity across racial, socioeconomic and cultural boundaries. EAB’s efforts are concentrated in the communities of Batey Libertad and Franco Bidó.

Bergman, who has just finished writing Catholic Social Learning: How to Educate the Faith That Does Justice, said he believes the best way to form students for solidarity is through personal encounter with the poor and marginalized.

The generosity and hospitality of the Dominicans coupled with “the stark and heartbreaking contrast between our privilege and their oppression,” Bergman said, have profound effects upon students. “When you know and care about somebody who’s suffering injustice, you want to do something about it.”

Nicaragua
For the past several years, Creighton alumni have lived in Nicaragua serving in the international program of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), www.jesuitvolunteers.org. By pure chance, four Creighton graduates accepted into the JVC were assigned to live in the same house in Managua. Holly Fuller, BA’03, was the first Creighton grad to live there from 2003 to 2005; Matt Havlik, BA’04, followed from 2005 to 2007. Jenna Wilcox, BSW’07, and Megan Wolters, BA’08, are currently serving in Managua, with Wilcox scheduled to return home at the end of the year. JVC international assignments typically are for two years.

Havlik, who graduated from Creighton with a bachelor’s degree in international studies and Spanish, had lived in the Dominican Republic during the summer before his senior year, working as the coordinator of one Creighton’s Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC) rural medical clinics. “When I applied to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, I actually requested to be placed in Peru,” Havlik said. “So it was pure coincidence that I ended up moving into the same house in Managua that Holly (Fuller) was preparing to leave.

“The work I did with ILAC had a profound impact on my desire to be a Jesuit volunteer. What I have learned, is that, for me, it is unfathomable to not want to know more deeply about the experiences, the struggles, and the joys of people with whom you never would have crossed paths had you stayed sitting where you were.”

Although at different times, Wilcox and Fuller both volunteered at a home for more than 100 children and adults with disabilities on Managua’s outskirts, called Pajarito Azul.

“With my work at Pajarito Azul, I am aware more than ever of the necessity to care for one another as our greatest and most urgent task, beyond bounds of family and nationality,” Wilcox e-mailed from Managua, “and to recognize the call to live a life of simplicity and love.”

She said her decision to be a Jesuit volunteer was influenced by the opportunities Creighton offered, such as service-learning classes, study abroad programs in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, and the Creighton Center for Service and Justice (CCSJ). “These activities and the Jesuit presence and message on campus, calling us to a life of greater service, planted in me the desire to experience in a more profound way the lives of the poor and outcast and a faith that can’t deny the injustices in the world,” Wilcox said.
 
Wolters, who has completed one year in Nicaragua and has a year to go, studied Spanish and secondary education at Creighton. She never expected to be placed in the same JVC location as her friend, Jenna. “When I applied to the program the year after Jenna, I never dreamed they would put us together. To our great surprise, they did. I’m so grateful to be able to share this experience with one of my best friends from Creighton.”

Wolters also credits Creighton with leading her to her current path. “The Jesuit education I received led me to be specifically interested in JVC. My experiences with the Encuentro Dominicano Program, the CCSJ, and the ILAC Summer Program led me to want to volunteer abroad after graduation.”

She says of her experience so far in Managua: “I am learning so much. I am learning how to live in community and how to be a better teacher among countless other things. More than anything, I am learning about myself and what it means to be human. It has been a very humbling experience thus far.

Holly Fuller, the director of Creighton’s Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC) office on campus, was the first Bluejay trailblazer in Managua.

Although she had lived all over the U.S. and in Germany with her family growing up, Fuller said the semester she spent in the Dominican Republic in college changed her life.

“As a freshman, I was planning on going into physical therapy. But that semester in the Dominican Republic, I saw a whole different side of the world that I had not been exposed to. When I came back, I took a justice and peace class and soon changed my major.

After graduation, her two years in Nicaragua confirmed her choice. That’s not to say her time there wasn’t challenging. “I heard horrific stories working in the orphanage,” Fuller said. “There was desperation. We cared for abandoned newborns on up to 50-year-olds with Down syndrome.”

And yet, she said, “It was also one of the greatest joys I have ever known.”

Today, after receiving a dual MBA/MSW from Washington University in St. Louis, Fuller coordinates ILAC immersion trips to the Dominican Republic for about 500 participants a year, including 10 high school groups from across the United States.

Said Fuller: “It is really special to see students have their consciousness raised, struggle with what they have seen, and then integrate it into their lives.”

Nine Alumni Serving with JVC

Nine recent Creighton graduates are working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), dedicating themselves to a year or more of assisting those less fortunate at sites across the country and around the world. They are: Laura Brannen, BS'09, Montana Family Support Network, Billings, Mont.; Katelyn Cherney, BA'08, East Bay Community Law Center, Oakland, Calif.; Mary Grasela, BA'09, St. Martin De Porres High School, Cleveland, Ohio; John Leer, BSBA'09, Bethel Community Services, Bethel, Alaska; Meghan Meehan, BSN'08, Native American Health Center, Oakland, Calif.; Polly Pillen, BA’08,Youth Enhancement Services, Belize City, Belize; Seamus Regan, BA'09, Colegio Miguel Pro, Tacna, Peru; Brianna Rochford, BSW'09, Western Montana Mental Health Center, Missoula, Mont.; and Grace Rudersdorf, BS'09, Catholic Family & Child Service, Yakima, Wash.

“We know that Jesuit volunteers allow local organizations to provide more services to the most vulnerable members of our society, so to be able to provide additional volunteers this year is exciting and important,” said Kevin O’Brien, president of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and a 1981 Creighton graduate. “And to know that the experience these volunteers have will transform their lives and way of looking at the world means that the impact will be felt for years to come. It continues to be inspiring to me and to all those who work with Jesuit volunteers.”