When undergraduate students decide to study in Notre Dame’s Washington Program, they often hope for exposure to politics and policy, for an internship at the Capitol, for an urban living experience. But for Greg Miller ’22 and his classmates, their time and work in D.C. brought them to the very thick of U.S. State Department decisions against corrupt Maltese officials.Greg took Professor Tom Kellenberg’s class on the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and learned how to assemble formal dossiers on corrupt government officials. The students were so inspired by the work that they returned to campus and created the Student Policy Network, a club dedicated to public policy projects, like the one they completed under the Magnitsky Act. The club members created a dossier on Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former Angolan prime minister, and Africa’s richest woman. She is accused of siphoning public funds to build her personal wealth to $3.5 billion while the average person in her country lives on less than $2 per day. Shortly after the students’ dossier was submitted to the State Department, dos Santos was officially sanctioned by the U.S. government.Learn more: https://go.nd.edu/FightingtoEndCorruption
More from What Would You Fight For?
- 2:01Fighting to End PovertyIn Dandora, Kenya, a sprawling neighborhood in Nairobi, housing for 250,000 people is built around the city’s largest dumpsite. Life near a large trash heap exposes the population to problems ranging from illness to unemployment to extreme poverty.Many of the town’s residents spend their days wading in the trash, looking for bits of aluminum and plastic that they can exchange for a few dollars to support their family. Others, typically women, run roadside stands selling goods like fruit or medications. For many families, the profits from these microenterprises are the only way to put food on the table or to send children to school.Notre Dame and its Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity have been invested in Dandora for several years. Research projects and a Holy Cross parish have taken root. In speaking with the local population about their needs, the Ford Program asked a trio of Notre Dame economists — Wyatt Brooks, Kevin Donovan and Terry Johnson — to come to Dandora to explore problems surrounding unemployment.For more information: http://ntrda.me/FFEndPoverty
- 2:01Fighting for the Lives of ChildrenWhen your child is diagnosed with a rare, genetic disease, it feels like you’re rolling down a mountain, just waiting to hit rock bottom, says Doug Berns. When his daughter, Samantha, was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, an incurable, neurodegenerative disorder, he and his wife watched as Samantha’s energy depleted, her balance became shaky, and her laughter quieted.At Notre Dame, researchers in the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases seek to identify and advance treatments for a number of rare diseases, including Niemann-Pick Type C.For more information: http://ntrda.me/LivesofChildren
