Through this program, we had the opportunity to meet with a well-established professional in the field of leadership and business, Carla Brooks. Ms. Brooks is a Business Development Leader that currently works as a Sr. Business Development Manager at Nickol Global Solutions. She gave an engaging lecture to all of the students, introducing us to the concept of marketing.

We were given the unique opportunity to be paired with a developing business in Bauchi State, Nigeria. The business partner, Hussaini Usman, had a tailoring business that recently burned down in a fire this year. We were given the chance to help rebuild their business from the fire.

After meeting with Hussaini Usman, we worked in teams to recreate Hussaini’s branding and infrastructure. The marketing teams created marketing materials including business cards, flyers, and signs. The infrastructure teams created plans for Shop Renovation, Shop redesign, and financial tracking. Then we presented out proposals to a panel of judges and received funding to implement our ideas.

During the Medicine and Public Health day, we learned about the concept of WASH in schools in Nigeria from Ms. Faith Blapooh. Faith worked as a social worker for the United Nations WASH Campaign in various countries around the world including Nigeria and Liberia. Ms. Blapooh taught us about implementing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene campaigns and how they can be used to improve general health in rural communities.

We created workshops to teach students in Nigeria the importance of hygiene. Some of the workshops included Brushing Teeth, Menstrual Hygiene, Washing Hands, etc. We presented our workshops to a panel of judges and made plans to have the workshops implemented the following year.

Outside of our WASH Campaigns, we got the opportunity to learn how to build plaster Casts and conduct emergency triage. Using a model emergency situation, we got the opportunity to implement our training to conduct an emergency response rescue.

I kicked off the day learning about security and intelligence by touring the International Spy Museum. The International Spy Museum is a non-profit museum documenting the tools, practices, and stars of espionage – all with interactive exhibits I used as an introduction to security and intelligence.

We met with many experts in the field of national security, including Chris Fox, who has served in the United States Government for 15 years and currently serves as a Political Officer in the State Department, and Ben Taylor, a former White House Director of Counterterrorism Strategy. He showed us various jobs in intelligence through a simulation where we stopped an attack on U.S. soil! After meeting Mr. Fox, we learned about real-life experiences in the field of intelligence from a panel of experts – Anand Arun, a Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Research Director at the DIA, Ashliyn Burgos, a current master’s student of Security Studies concentrating in Terrorism and Substate Violence at Georgetown University, and Matthew Brodman, an official in the Department of Homeland Security and a director of a DHS field office.

We put all of our knowledge to use by creating security protocols for various emergencies for Borno State University in Borno State, Nigeria. We worked in teams to create flyers to hang around Borno State University’s campus and inform students on what to do in the event of an emergency. We presented in front of a panel of judges for the chance of receiving a grant to implement the security protocol we created!

We started our day with a keynote on law and advocacy from Maggie Birkel, the deputy director at the Second Look Project (“SLP”), which provides legal representation to those seeking relief from extreme sentences they received as young people in Washington, D.C. After, improved our public speaking and presentation skills, two critical skills in the field of law and advocacy, with Cynthia Goode-Works, the Director of the Stephen S. Weinstein Advocacy Program at the Washington College of Law at the American University.

We continued our exploration into law and advocacy by departing for the University of Maryland’s Crime Lab, where we learned about criminal justice, forensics, and the progression from crime scene to courtroom. Dr. Tom Mauriello, a Senior Lecturer and Laboratory Instructor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice for the past 45 years, presented on all the different careers in criminology and even showed us a crime scene recreation that university students use for simulations!

We jumped right back into law and advocacy with Adam Hunter, a founding member of the law firm Hunter and Johnson, PLLC and an adjunct professor at Howard University School of Law. He lectured about cross examination performed in trials, which we applied in a mock trial. We crossed examined witnesses in two different mock court cases, played by our very own team leads!