Student Spotlight: Gold Quill Award winner Christina Wu
by Janna White
 She has traveled to India, learned conversational Danish, and completed a 1,800-mile trip by bicycle. She helped coordinate the Vancouver, British Columbia promotional screenings of Million Dollar Baby and Miss Congeniality. She can explain microcredit so that it sounds as simple as elementary school arithmetic. Is there anything Christina Wu can’t do?
“It’s just a matter of having passion and determination,” offers Christina when she talks to Student Connection on a quiet Wednesday morning. That Christina possesses ample amounts of both is obvious to anyone who reads her winning entry to the IABC Gold Quill Awards for her work as communication director of Vancouver’s Global Agents for Change (Global AFC). Since November 2006, Christina has tirelessly supported Global AFC in its mission to support sustainable solutions to global poverty, while inspiring youth to create a better world. Part of their mission involves supporting student-funded sustainable microcredit loans through an online person-to-person microlending service called Kiva.org.
Microcredit loan applicants generally live in poverty in developing countries and are ineligible for most loans due to insufficient credit, employment history or collateral. Kiva.org connects Global AFC and other users directly with borrowers, and allows them to track the progress and impact of the small, trust-based loans directly through the web site. Once a loan has been paid back, the same funds can be lent to someone new. “That’s the beauty of it,” Christina explains. “We could do a fundraiser and donate that money, but people would only benefit from it once. As students you want whatever contribution you make to go as far as it can, and that’s what microcredit allows. After you’ve contributed the money you can keep giving it out over and over again.”
“I was always looking out for opportunities that would give me a chance to communicate or raise awareness of social issues. [When I learned about microcredit] I realized this was a dignified means of impacting the lives of the poor and their families.” Christina leveraged her knowledge of communication from her coursework and internships to devise a communication plan for Global AFC that would inspire others to become aware of and committed to the cause. Her efforts are clearly paying off—at the time of publication, Global AFC’s loan fund totaled over CDN$53,000. She swears she couldn’t have done it without the help of her co-workers at the British Columbia Transmission Corporation (BCTC), where she completed an internship as part of her university’s cooperative work program. (Christina also interned for a full-service agency under the co-op program, where she learned about event planning by coordinating sponsorship and attendance for movie screenings.) “I had no previous media relations experience whatsoever, but [the people at BCTC] were dealing with this stuff everyday. They were the ones who taught me what a media release is, how you write one, how you make a pitch. Reporters would call me during work hours [to talk about Global AFC] and no one minded. They were so supportive.”
In the summer of 2007, after completing her internship with BCTC, Christina participated in Global AFC’s Riding to Break the Cycle bicycle tour from British Columbia to Mexico. “I should’ve trained more,” she says. “I was too busy coordinating things behind the scenes, so the first week of the ride was really my training session. When you’re riding 50 or 60 miles a day, it’s amazing how fast your body can adapt!” She called on her past experience with international travel as a study-abroad student in Copenhagen, Denmark for encouragement. “The Danish love biking. That’s where my inspiration for all things biking comes from.” Once Christina and the other riders grew accustomed to the physical demands, they shifted their focus and energy to the tour’s true purpose: spreading Global AFC’s message along the entire U.S. Pacific coast.
Loans in action
After ending their journey in Tijuana, Mexico, some of the Riding to Break the Cycle riders traveled to Hermosillo, Mexico to understand the real impact of the loans by meeting microcredit borrowers in person. One borrower supported her family by making tortillas entirely by hand. She used her small loan to buy a machine that separated the dough for her, which increased her productivity and grew her business. (Christina would have liked to join the delegation, but she was due back to Vancouver to board a plane for her India vacation.)
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Christina counts San Francisco, home of Kiva.org (and IABC headquarters!), among her favorite stops. “We already knew a lot about Kiva, but it was really nice to see what was actually happening in the office. San Francisco also has a huge biking community, so one day we joined Critical Mass [a monthly ride through city streets that draws thousands of bikers] and everyone wanted to know why we were there. It was a great opportunity to talk about our cause.” She hopes to return for another visit when Break the Cycle riders pass through San Francisco again this year— that is, if she can make it. She already has plenty on her plate for the summer, including a trip to New York City to accept her Gold Quill Award— not to mention finishing the last two classes of her joint major in business and communication at Simon Fraser University.
As for her upcoming job search, Christina, unsurprisingly, is keeping an open mind to the possibilities ahead. “I’m not limiting my search to nonprofits. There are a lot of businesses out there starting to do things differently by really looking at things like the triple bottom line and asking, Are we as concerned about our social and environmental footprint as we are about profit?” Somehow we at Student Connection have a feeling Christina will make sure those questions are asked no matter where she ends up.
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