Students offer time, money to Peace Exchange
Some students want to save the world, and they have decided to start in college.
Joe O'Shea, Nick Fiore and Alex Merkovic have decided to create the Global Peace Exchange, which is described as similar to the U.S. Peace Corps at the college level.
The goal of the organization is to gather student volunteers from all over the country and the world to use their talents and skills internationally to serve less fortunate countries.
"Our mission is to reach as many people as possible," Fiore said.
“We're the quarterback school of the whole thing,” Merkovic said. “It's surprisingly easy to network. We're not the only people that care. This generation has a lot to offer and wants to make a difference in the world.”
The group hopes to go to Rwanda to build a school and bring medicine to children. Last year, Merkovic gathered like-minded people to lend a helping hand in Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. The camp was started in 1990 and houses more than 50,000 refugees from Liberia who fled the civil war.
"We really learned so much," Merkovic said. "We learned more from our village than we were able to teach."
“They have this hope that is so profound,” Fiore said. “We tried our best to improve upon their living conditions, education and hope.”
Merkovic also thinks that his good deeds will foster communion among other countries.
"If the first American you meet is building you a school or providing you treatment for worms, it's going to give you a better view of Americans," he said.
"The one element that binds everyone is that we are all trying to survive," O'Shea said.
The group is looking for donations and grants that will help with the cost of international service projects.
The True Seminole campaign will underwrite some of the costs, O'Shea said. The mission “embraces the values that make FSU so unique.”
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