Carolina Alumni Review - May/June 2012

‘The old Native American quote
was something like,“You have two
ears and one mouth for a reason.”
It’s a pretty good quote.’
Rye Barcott
can become a prisoner of your own per-
spective, rather than stepping back and
really trying to understand a place before
you do something. That gets you listening
and doing more listening than speaking
when you’re traveling. The old Native
American quote was something like, “You
have two ears and one mouth for a rea-
son.” It’s a pretty good quote.

What advice do you have for col-
lege students who want to be social
entrepreneurs?

Find and develop relationships and friendships with mentors. They’re going to take some time out from their lives and tell you the things that are harder for you to hear, and in a way that you can actually register when you’re starting to go astray. Approach people. Some of those folks will not respond. That’s fine. You have to work at it. But if you work at it, those relationships can be immensely valuable in providing you with ideas as well as just personal sustenance and real joy in life.

Another thing is the notion of depth and breadth in our lives. [Students] have more and more options [for travel], but if you … don’t really go deep into your area, you will find that you’re left with a more shallow set of experiences as opposed to any really deep understanding or knowledge of a place or people or the impact you can make in an area. In Kibera, it worked in part because we stuck with it, but it was also because there weren’t other Kiberas in my life. We were able to stay focused on this particular area. You could use your summers in college and travel to four different continents, and that would probably be a lot of fun. But you might not get as much out of it. It’s important to come to some kind of clarity [about your interests], and then recognize that, in this world, it still takes depth to do