HELLO, I'M

Rebecca Tolsma.

Economics Major - College of Business

Rebecca Tolsma

BBA in Economics

University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh

Oshkosh, Wisconsin

tolsmr63@uwosh.edu

About

Why Global Scholar

MY BACKGROUND

I came from a place where it was normal to shun diversity. I grew up in a rural area where the population of 8,000 was white, religious, middle to high class citizens and everyone liked it that way. When someone of color came to live in the town you could tell they were the outcast, the odd man out so to say. Because of my surroundings I tried to blend in with this behavior but, it didn’t feel right to me. When I came to Oshkosh I wanted to know more about life with diversity. I started with a class called “Current Topics and the Bible”. It made me realize how many people didn’t know about the bible, and didn’t believe in God. From there I took my first honors class and with the topic of “population”. I didn’t really know what to expect when I first entered the class, but I couldn’t have been happier about the topic after taking the class. The best way I could describe it is by quoting what my wise professor said, “take off you American hat”. Which is the nice way to say stop looking at things from your privileged high horse and realize there are people actually living in these situations. After learning how to do this, I wanted to know more about how people lived and what could be done to help them. In general I wanted to know what else I wasn't seeing about the world. By combining my interest in the social world and mathematics I chose to major in economics with a global scholar option.

Venezuela

Often times people see countries going through economic turmoil, or political unrest and they feel they understand. I think we all have ideas that we think could help, which is not something to deter, I encourage people to help in any way they can. But, I learned a really valuable lesson about thinking “I know how to fix it” for a problem that is not in my home country.

I worked with a group of students in my Economies of Lesser Developed Countries class to create a product for people in a developing nation. Together we created a product to help malnourished children in Venezuela. We decided to work with this country because it is a developing country and it is trying to persevere through tremendous downfalls in the economy. After looking at what children were suffering from we knew we wanted to help them the most. We found that most children were suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition, also known as SAM. From there we generated our plan.

We created part of a supply chain for our product, which included how the product was made and how it would be supplied to the children. I was specifically in charge of the creation of the bar and the costs and profit generated from the bar. I looked to see what type of nutrition the children were lacking and then researched what foods would give them that nutritional support. In doing so I found many natural foods that could easily be placed in a the bar to give the children nine essential nutritional items. After the creation of the bar I looked at the average cost to produce and based our price after what we wanted as a profit margin. After determining those factors the group knew that we could not sell straight to the children, or even their family. We devised a distribution route to sell to a non-profit organization called “Giving Children Hope” who already have a base setup in Venezuela.

Our goal from this project was to not just get a good grade but to understand the difficulty that these people are suffering from, and to find ways around the distraught economy and social infrastructure to get children the help they need. Although our plan was not set forth we did find many NGOs working in Venezuela and could understand how difficult it was for them to be there. The main lesson I learned from this project is to understand the level of intellect and networking necessary to help people who are in these situations, and the immense work it takes to overcome simple issues such as, “where do we sell our product?” Because, maybe you can’t even sell your product. There’s so many variables that you really need to take the time to understand the culture and the way of business in the country before you say, “I know how to fix it.”

This slide show illustrates the main points of the project

Venezuela Project

Djibouti Project

Djibouti

For this project I created a study abroad trip to help people in a developing country. I created the idea alone and consulted with my Economics professor, Sarinda Taengnoi Siemers, and IS professor, Michael Patton, if I was unable to figure out the next steps. My essential goal of the project is to bring laptops to a school in Djibouti, Africa to help the school children have better access to academic materials as well as more academic content. The idea of my trip was simple, the people on the trip would build laptop carts that would house the laptops for the children. They would also be in charge of downloading and installing the programs onto the computers for the children to use. The laptops would allow the children to access a full library of books instead of having to have physical copies of the books. I chose to have this type of program on the computers because the literacy rates in Djibouti are significantly low and as the country grows, because of it enlarging port, more people are needing to get into the business world. To be able to enter that realm of work, simple and basic literacy is a must. This project furthered my understanding of bringing technology to developing countries and how barriers must be worked with. The following content explains my work in more vivid detail.

Scroll over the following text boxes to learn more about the project

WHERE

THE PROBLEM

THE PLAN

MATERIALS & HOUSING

FUNDING

COSTS

RECRUITMENT

London

I have always wanted to travel, but I know there is a part of me that is scared to fail, so I took the “easy way out” and went on a study abroad to a country that spoke the same language as me, England. When I decided I wanted to go on the Honors study abroad to London I was very excited, specifically to see all of the monumental sites that are housed in London. Once I was there I was blown away from how fundamentally different London was to any American city I had been to. The way people lived, how they ate, where they worked, how they dressed, any typical thing you could think of was different. Yet, I, in my American hat at home, thought that they would be so similar to us because they spoke the same language. Although I learned a lot about different types of art and how to interpret all of it, the biggest lesson I took away is to not judge the people by simple, extrinsic values. I met so many people, from many different countries, of all ages and ethnicities, that taught me more than any of my professors at home could, because it was something that could not be taught. I needed to go through the real life experience rather that to see and hear someone talk about it. Being in a different country and seeing the beauty of intertwined cultures is the best thing I was able to take away from my study abroad, at it makes me want to visit areas of the world I had previously never wanted to go.