USC students to attend conference led by Clinton


USC students are set to take part in the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) conference, an annual conference for college students that aims to promote leadership and solutions to global challenges.

First Daughter · Chelsea Clinton kicks off  2013’s Clinton Global Initiative University conference by welcoming students at the Opening Plenary. - Photo courtesy of Cassi Gritzmacher

First Daughter · Chelsea Clinton kicks off 2013’s Clinton Global Initiative University conference by welcoming students at the Opening Plenary. – Photo courtesy of Paul Morse / Clinton Global Initiative

The conference will be hosted by former President Bill Clinton at Arizona State University from March 21-23. The event is part of a wider mission of CGI U to “turn ideas into action.”

USC students have consistently participated in the conference in past years. Students must prepare an application to the conference, which includes a “Commitment to Action.”

“This commitment to action is a new specific and measurable initiative from either an individual student, or a group of students that will undertake in the months after the CGI U conference,” said Bill Wetzel, director of CGI U. “We try to bring in a lot of leading young change-makers who can tell their stories to the students in the room.”

The CGI U Conference includes approximately 1,100 students from more than 300 schools and universities around the world, Wetzel said.

Lychee Dai, a graduate student at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, attended CGI U in 2013. Her project focused on sharing knowledge through online media.

“My commitment involved launching an education app that allows people to share their educational knowledge,” Dai said. “If you are good at math, and I can speak another language, then we can be connected on the app. After being connected on the app initially, you can then learn from each other in person.”

At the conference, Dai won funding to fully develop her project.

Angela Zhou, a freshman in the World Bachelor in Business program, will attend CGI U this year.

Her Commitment to Action project aims to combat sex trafficking in East Asia as well as in other underdeveloped countries. She hopes to work with the International Princess Project, an organization dedicated to combating sex trafficking.

“As I learned more about it, I realized that sex trafficking is a really big problem in America and in other countries also,” Zhou said. “International Princess Project provides women who are rescued from sex trafficking brothels in India a vocation in sewing pajamas. It’s a really innovative way to combine fashion and social activism, which is something I’m interested in in the future.”

Zhou said she realized she wanted to help sex trafficking victims while in high school.

“I realized through volunteering with International Princess Project in high school that first of all, not many people knew what sex trafficking was, and second of all, not many people my age were volunteering,” Zhou said. “I decided I wanted to educate other students my age about sex trafficking, so I founded an organization called the Teen Ambassadors Program that aids sex trafficking prevention organizations.”

She hopes that her involvement in the CGI U conference will allow her to expand her efforts further.

“I haven’t really spread it beyond the Orange County area, but I am going to push for the growth of the organization and push for the growth of the Teen Ambassadors Program,” Zhou said. “I think it would be really beneficial to expand the organization past just the borders of India and into other East Asian countries as well.”

Tim Kline, a graduate student at the Marshall School of Business, will also attend CGI U. For his project, he worked with two students from the Art Center College of Design, Connie Bakshi and Rudy Rummel.

The project focuses on the creation of a children’s game called Tejo Conejo, based on popular Colombian traditions. Their goal is to allow disadvantaged women in Colombia to acquire technical skills and earn a livelihood in the manufacturing of this game.

“What we envision is that we’re setting up a micro-factory for the women that’ll have daycare for their kids, right in their communities. So all they have to do is walk down the street, and their children will be there with them,” Kline said. “They can spend as many hours or as few hours as they want.”

Kline explained that the group hopes to appeal to a wider market in Colombia.

“We think there will be a market in Bogota for a game that taps into traditional Colombian folklore but also is a social impact project that helps out families in the outskirts of Bogota.”

Kline has enjoyed reaching out to work with other schools.

“I think it’s so fulfilling to work with the designers. It’s important to have cross-functional teams to get things done,” Kline said. “Working with people who are most creative and have a different perspective has been very rewarding.”