Carolina Alumni Review - November/December 2008

Honors
Service at Heart of Distinguished Young Alumni Awards

Citineni, Deifell use entrepreneurial skills to tackle social problems, encourage others

Two entrepreneurs who tackle issues such tions. One, the Institute for Public Media as hunger, poverty and diversity – and Arts in Durham, involved youths in public engage others in service projects – were service through media arts – photography, honored as the GAA’s 2008 Distinguished video, radio and the Internet. The nonprofit Young Alumni. promoted user-generated content long Sindhura Citineni ’04 of Morrisville and before new media such as You Tube.

KEITH KING ’ 82

Tony Deifell ’ 91 of San Francisco received Other Deifell initiatives included the the awards at a banquet Oct. 3 for bringing –ISM (N.) Curricula and Faculty credit to the University through their Development Project, which helps colleges achievements. explore diversity through video and multi- “The remarkable accomplishments of media. He was on the national advisory many of Carolina’s younger alumni are board of Rock the Vote and was a fellow of truly inspiring,” said GAA President the W.K. Kellogg Foundation National Douglas Dibbert ’ 70. “The GAA delights in Leadership Group. presenting each year the Distinguished As chief strategist for KaBOOM!, a Young Alumni Awards to those who have leader in community-built playgrounds and made our alumni and our University so skate parks, Deifell applied his Harvard ^proud.” Sindhura Citineni ’04, left, started an anti-hunger campaign master’s degree in business administration

Citineni is now a Carolina dental stu- that has grown into an international organization; Tony Deifell _skills _to _developing _play _areas _in _under-’ 91 helped start the APPLES service-learning program at UNC

^{dent. As} ^an ^{undergraduate, she} ^was ^movedand uses multimedia projects to address social issues. served neighborhoods. He designed a by images of starving people in her native national city-based advocacy program called India. She started thinking, “What if it was “America’s Most Playful Cities,” which my dad? My brother? It’s someone’s dad, Harvard Business School featured as a best someone’s brother.” That epiphany led her practice and a learning case study. to found Hunger Lunch, a program that Last year, Deifell published Seeing Beyond serves lunches of beans and rice weekly on Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers, show-campus to drive home the food plight of casing work by students at the Governor many of the world’s poor. Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh.

With support from UNC’s APPLES The students participated in a photography (Assisting People in Planning Learning club he started there.

Experiences in Service) program, the A current project was inspired by a Carolina Center for Public Service and the child’s question: “Why do you do what you Campus Y, Hunger Lunch became the first do?” Deifell created www.wdydwyd.com, undergraduate international hunger-relief an interactive Web site where users may organization on campus. answer the question, submit photos and

In its first year, the project raised more more. The site has drawn more than half a than $7,500. Citineni and another student million viewers to see the self-expressive used that money to set up a Nutrition works posted by thousands of participants. House in her native city, Hyderabad, India, Since 1989, the GAA’s Distinguished where a high-protein, high-calcium drink Young Alumni Awards have recognized was served to children. alumni aged 40 or younger whose accom-

Through the UNC business-plan com- plishments have brought credit to the petition Carolina Challenge – a student-led University. ■ program that is part of the Carolina The APPLES service-learning program was Entrepreneurial Initiative – Citineni and profiled in the September/October 2007 issue of other students expanded Hunger Lunch the Review, and Nourish International was into the nonprofit Nourish International. profiled in the September/October 2008 issue. They took second place in the challenge’s Both are available to GAA members at social-enterprise category and developed alumni.unc.edu/archive. their ideas through the Kenan-Flagler

Business School’s “Launching the Venture” ONLINE: To see a list of past DYA winners, course. The business school presented visit alumni.unc.edu/awards.

Citineni with its Outstanding Young Alumni Award in 2007.

Nourish International has established nine long-term, sustainable development projects in impoverished communities, including a micro-irrigation project in the Bolivian Andes and community food plots at elementary schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Headquartered in Chapel Hill, the organization has 23 chapters at universities across the U.S. and plans to expand. This year, the N.C. Peace Corps honored Nourish International with the N.C. Peace Prize for excellence in cross-cultural solutions and sustainable development.

Deifell, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, helped found the APPLES service-learning program at UNC when he was a student. The program helps students and faculty combine classroom work with community service projects.

Michael Ulku-Steiner ’ 92, another of the APPLES organizers, recalled scrambling to keep up with Deifell’s “frantic creativity, hoping we could make happen even a few of the many good ideas that came cascading out of Tony’s brain.”