Cornell junior brings change home to Nigeria

Kelechi Umoga '15 spent this past summer leading the construction of a health care clinic in the Jeida village of Abuja, Nigeria. "We literally wept for this village considering the absence of very basic necessities of life, such as clean water, public toilet, electricity, etc.," said Umoga, a human biology, health and society major in the College of Human Ecology. "The fact that a village not so far from the ultramodern city of Abuja, the country's capital, could exist without the vital social facilities was something we could not rationalize." Umoga's project, Bridging the Gap 2013, was one step in a four-pronged intervention strategy. After high school, Umoga took a gap year and joined the Evangelism and Missions Ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, which recognized that the Jeida village was in need of urgent help. During Umoga's gap year and thereafter, the ministry helped bring a school, two blocks of public toilets and a borehole to the village. Umoga's final goal, a health care clinic, required more funds than the church group had to offer. "I am pursuing a minor in global health, and a critical element of the minor is an approved eight-week field experience in which students live and work abroad in a resource-poor setting," Umoga said.