CHANGE Leader Matt Carriker: Turning Issues into Action
21 November 2001
"Once you've learned about the justice issues, you can't not integrate them into your life". Matt Carriker
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CHANGE Leader Matt Carriker left for Belize in July for a two-year stint teaching at a girls' high school in Belize City. The program is sponsored by the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and Carriker credits his time as an Oxfam CHANGE Leader for providing some of the inspiration he needed to go. "Once you've learned about the justice issues," said Carriker, "you can't not integrate them into your life".
Carriker is one of sixteen students from colleges and universities across the country who completed the 2000-2001 pilot year of Oxfam America's CHANGE (Campuses Helping Achieve a New Global Era) Initiative last spring. Following an intensive one-week training with the other CHANGE leaders in August 2000, Carriker returned to Bates College in Maine for his senior year. There, he brought some of his new training to bear on issues he considers important, including homelessness and sweatshop labor.
Matt and fellow students worked with the Bates bookstore and got commitments to expand their purchases from non-sweatshop sources. Matt and his friends also encouraged conscientious buying among their fellow students: "We educated students about how much power they have as consumers," Matt said. Carriker and others also campaigned in support of a Maine bill enforcing a code of conduct for treatment of workers.
Like most CHANGE Leaders, Carriker was already deeply committed to issues of social justice before he joined the Oxfam program, but he found his time as a CHANGE leader to be invaluable. "I wanted to learn more about social justice issues," he said, "and Oxfam provided me with a lot of great materials, helping to get my mind moving
or get more information."
The Oxfam America CHANGE Initiative
With a generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxfam America launched the CHANGE Initiative in 2000. This ambitious program reaches out to American youth and invites them to become involved with Oxfam America to learn more about global realities and how to be effective activists for change. Students from colleges and universities across the U.S. are selected as CHANGE Leaders for their dedication to Oxfam's mission of global social change and their interest in becoming leaders in making that change. In July 2001, 77 new CHANGE Leaders came to Boston for training, and they will be taking their knowledge to campuses across the country this fall.
