Junior Lauren Anderson spent her second summer in China, building her knowledge of the culture and business practices there, and fine-tuning her career goals.
This summer she performed market research for Adidas and Timberland brands, focusing on localization issues.
She also worked for an NGO (non-governmental organization), the China Children and Teenagers’ Fund, created in 1981 as one of the first charitable organizations in China. Anderson worked on the Spring Bud Project, with a focus on educating young girls. In 1989, when the Project began, nearly 5 million children were unable to attend school; 83% of those were girls.
In addition to literacy and pre-professional training of middle- and high-school-age girls, Anderson was involved in efforts to create Girl Scout mentoring programs in China. She has also begun an effort at USC to create a cultural exchange between college women here and in China.
Anderson has also begun a research project to examine the impact of China’s one-child policy on women and girls. Her experiences in China have helped shape her career goal to work for an NGO in China.
Anderson took a break from her internship to participate in a SEALnet (Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network) project in the Philippines. The project’s goal was to promote health awareness among elementary age children, particularly about intestinal worms. (At one school, the rate of intestinal worms was 90%, causing children to miss a critical number of school days.) Half of her group created fun educational materials for children to teach about hand-washing and wearing shoes. The other half mentored high school students to become leaders of the project and thus make it sustainable.
Anderson’s busy summer continued in late August when she attended an HPAIR (Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations) conference in Beijing, and a second conference in Hong Kong. She, along with Moore School junior Lucas Fox, were the only students from public U.S. universities among the attendees from Ivy League universities.
The globetrotting junior plans to further broaden her experiences through a study abroad in the spring, either in Europe or South Africa.
Gail Crouch
September 2007