As she was preparing for her first project with Global Outreach, Fordham’s service and cultural immersion program, Norah Mosquea wasn’t quite sure how she would meet the cost.
Then came the welcome news that ended the uncertainty: her costs would be covered by gifts from members of the Fordham University President’s Council, a group of accomplished alumni who mentor students and work to advance the University.
“I literally started tearing up,” said Mosquea, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “I told my mom, and she was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it. It was just so helpful, and I was so grateful for it.”
Mosquea is one of dozens of students to benefit in recent years from President’s Council members’ gifts to make Global Outreach accessible to students in Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), who have high financial need.
A Social Justice Focus
Council member Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86, made the first such gift in 2018 after learning that the HEOP leadership wanted to make Global Outreach an integral part of the HEOP experience. Since then, member gifts have helped dozens of students in the program, including 48 students who took part in Global Outreach this year and last year alone.
Mosquea participated twice in Global Outreach, which runs week-long projects in the U.S. and abroad—in partnership with other organizations—that are centered on social justice and community engagement.
‘My People’: A Personal Connection
For the first project, in spring 2023, she traveled to the Dominican Republic, where her family is from; learned about environmental conservation efforts firsthand; and met up for the first time in 14 years with her father, who lives there. “It was just an incredible experience to not only learn about the land, but also my people as well,” she said.
Last spring she served as a student leader for a project in Puerto Rico, where she and the other students helped efforts to convert an old U.S. military base into a community center that promotes environmental education and ecotourism.
Both projects fueled her desire to work in environmental education and sustainability consulting. “Global outreach is so unique, it’s so beautiful,” she said. “It’s really enriched my life in so many different ways.”
Deepening Spirituality
Another student in HEOP, Fordham College at Rose Hill junior Miguel Picazo, also received support for traveling to Mexico with Global Outreach in 2023, where he learned about sustainable farming, and then for traveling to London this year. Through a partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service, students visited migrant-heavy areas of East London and South London, attended Mass at Jesuit churches, and volunteered in their food pantries, among other service work.
The London Masses, with their diversity of celebrants, reinforced some of the impressions gleaned on his Mexico excursion, when he encountered migrants from diverse countries who were sustained by their spirituality.
“This spirituality sense makes you feel more human—we’re not all different, we all want the same thing,” Picazo said, “a better life, better education, a better future for our families and kids. And experiences like that stick with you for a while.”
