MCN, Meet OCC

January 31st, 2010 at 7:01 pm

The Millennium Campus Network works to “harness the passion of student leaders and change-makers, and build a generation of leaders who are equipped with the tools they need to make ending extreme poverty a reachable goal within our lifetime.” That sounds pretty applicable, right? Will Herberich, the Executive Director and President of the MCN, spoke with us about student organizing. While us ONE Campus Challenge kids are working daily to organize students on our campus, we are always looking for new ideas about fundraising, membership retention, event planning and advocacy campaigns.

While there are currently only MCN districts in Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago, students at schools across the country can learn from the work MCN has done. Will opened up the presentation by asking us what problems we’ve faced in our organizing efforts thus far. OCC leaders had a lot to say — lack of funding, issues with membership retention, bureaucracy and attendance at events.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say I was relieved to find out that I was not alone in these struggles. One of the biggest purposes of MCN is to create a community of like-minded students. We are really fortunate to have this through the OCC, and Will’s presentation moved me to work more with the students sitting around me. We were also inspired to work closer with other like-minded organizations on our campuses (STAND, Amnesty International, Bread for the World, etc.) to plan bigger and better events.

Since so many of us struggle with funding, Will told us about the new Student Action Grants coming in 2010 from the MCN. Student organizations will be able to apply for those grants, but also receive information about other funding sources such as the Clinton Global Initiative University program. We talked about fundraisers to have on campus — restaurant benefit nights and donations from applicable academic departments.

The moral of the story is that we need to work together as students in the fight against global poverty. This means between OCC schools (big time points for collaboration with another school!), with other groups on campus (big time points for partner organization collaboration!) or with professors and departments on campus. We’re all in the same fight and the MCN is a perfect example of how great an impact we can make!

To learn more about the Millennium Campus Network, check out their website at www.millenniumcampusnetwork.org.

- Stephanie Parrish, Campus Outreach Ambassador for Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin