By participating in a newly rebooted student club called GlobalResolve, a handful of students on ASU’s Polytechnic campus hope to use the skills they’ve learned in school to aid underprivileged communities around the world.
GlobalResolve has been a part of Polytechnic culture since 2006 and had in the past been composed of two elements: a curriculum and a club. However, the ordinary ebb and flow of membership caused the club to deteriorate over time while the curriculum flourished.
Mark Henderson, a professor of engineering at the College of Technology and Innovation, is the executive director of the club’s curricular branch and spoke highly of its mission.
“There are three goals that the organization has,” he said. “The first is to improve the quality of life of people who live in poverty around the world, and we do this through technology. The second is to create sustainable economic development through that same technology, and the third is to give life-changing experiences to students.”
GlobalResolve curriculum has been available for eight years to students on the Polytechnic campus who choose to specialize in humanitarian engineering, and Henderson estimated that more than 200 students are involved in the program.
The GlobalResolve Club, which was originally founded to promote student activism in partnership with the engineering curriculum but did not experience the same success, was granted a fresh start earlier this year when eight undergraduate engineering majors took up the cause.
Michelle Marco, who is now president of the GlobalResolve Club, was at the forefront of this movement.
As an engineering freshman, Marco said she had heard about the old club “through the grapevine,” and was inspired to give it new life after becoming involved with a curricular GlobalResolve initiative to build a greenhouse for an orphanage in Peru.
“The club was rebooted because of this project,” she said. “I felt that the premise of the club, and the premise of this project matched up perfectly.”
Marco also said that becoming a club made fundraising for the venture much easier, as partial funding for the trip was eventually obtained through the Undergraduate Student Government.
Over ASU’s spring break last month, the GlobalResolve Club used this money to purchase plane tickets to Cusco, Peru, where they proceeded with their mission to build an orphanage’s greenhouse in the impoverished suburb of Azul Wasi.
The club members replaced a greenhouse at the orphanage that had been destroyed by the city’s harsh climate in earlier months, enabling orphanage employees to once again grow food in the winter and to better feed the children they looked after.
Electronic engineering senior Saul Tiscareño was among those who contributed to the project, and he felt that the most rewarding aspect of the project was observing the children at the orphanage as they reacted to him and his fellow GlobalResolve Club members.
“It was very rewarding,” he said. “There were so many children there who were so loving and so happy to see you. It was nice to be there for them and be a person that they could look up to.”
The GlobalResolve Club does not plan to deteriorate a second time after the success of its first project, and members, including Tiscareño, have high hopes for its future projects.
Reach the reporter at megann.phillips@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @megannphillips
