Member Profile
Dedicated senior gives of herself to Carolina and to the world
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| Danika Barry |
Carolina offers countless opportunities to give back, not just as an alumna or an unaffiliated supporter, but often also in the unique gifts that are made by current students.
UNC senior Danika Barry, a political science and public policy analysis double major, is one current student who has discovered a variety of ongoing ways to serve and support the university. Barry participates in many university organizations, such as the Millennium Village Project, which is an international effort to eradicate extreme poverty; the NC Fellows program, an undergraduate leadership development program; Cobb Connected Learning — Science of Students and in her work as a Scholars’ Latino Initiative Mentor, an educational support program through the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid.
Many of these University groups have far-reaching involvement in communities beyond the campus, including sites around the world. Through her volunteerism, Barry’s intangible gifts to the school are many. This year, Barry gave her first monetary gift to UNC, at the Chancellors’ Club level, to the student organization Advocates for Grassroots Development in Uganda (AGRADU). AGRADU is a UNC student initiative that focuses on community building and economic development in Uganda. The program connects indigenous grassroots efforts with the skills and resources of student interns who strive to establish external funding and networking opportunities for Ugandans.
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| Here are children with the second heifer born from the original heifer they received. The family is able to generate Shs 4,000 ($2.42) per day while the cow is in the milking period (7-8 months of the year). |
Barry spent much time on the University campus working with AGRADU, as well as an internship with AGRADU this past summer at Kyetume Community Based Healthcare in Mukono, Uganda. The healthcare organization at Kyetume has implemented a participatory and human rights approach in striving to better serve rural peoples and improve health standards in Uganda. “The views there are breath-taking — the poverty heart-breaking,” she said. “The people, especially the children, were so happy to have us there — to have someone to care about what happened to them.”
Barry’s volunteer work at Kyetume has given her the chance to learn about and participate in the organization’s many outreach efforts in Uganda, including an HIV/AIDS palliative care project, a program for orphans and vulnerable children that serves more than 4,000 children, water and sanitation projects, women’s and community health, and a school gardens project.
Barry spent considerable time during her internship helping Kyetume expand their microfinance scheme. “It was initiated in 2006 through three of the eight parish-level orphan support groups that Kyetume works with,” Barry wrote in her blog on June 28, 2007.“After receiving a government grant, each parish was allocated Shs 420,000 ($255 US dollars).” Barry says that AGRADU may invest its funds into the organization’s microfinance scheme, which would represent a 65 percent increase in funding overall. Those funds could help support an expansion of Kyetume’s HIV/AIDS center’s information communication technology resource center.
Through her summer internship, Barry’s work and influence have not only brought growth and positive change to Kyetume, but resonate throughout the UNC community in a way that bridges the distance between two vastly different places. As Barry prepared to say “Wereba!” or “farewell,” she departed Uganda knowing that she brought a piece of UNC to a part of Africa that welcomed the University’s help, and began her final year at Carolina knowing that gifts such as hers are vital to the success and strength of the University.
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