A camera goes a long way

A disposable camera costs about $5, but a recent student initiative could yield an even more valuable result by using them to pay for Ukrainian orphans to go to college.

A group of university students sent disposable cameras to orphanages in Ukraine to connect the children with sponsors in the United States through their photos. The pictures, which are posted on Shutters4Scholars.com, are linked to ways to give money to the children who took them.

The website is the brainchild of Yana Jmourko, a senior civil and environmental engineering major and Ukrainian native, who started it with the help of the university's Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) Honors Fellows Program.

"Helping the orphans was an interest and passion of mine," Jmourko said. "I've seen how important college is for success and want to give these orphans the same opportunity."

Jmourko spent her childhood in Ukraine before moving to America. Last summer, she returned to the country and visited the many orphanages there. Touched by the children she saw, Jmourko brought back a desire to give these orphans the same opportunities she has been given in America.

With this mission, Jmourko pitched the idea to her QUEST directors of creating a non-profit to help these orphans.

While most of the students in the QUEST programs work with previously established organizations, Jmourko's team was faced with the challenge of starting from scratch.

"The other programs were very business-y," said senior finance major Shaun Robinson, one of six students who chose to work on Jmourko's team. "This program made me feel like I was doing something."

Jmourko said she appreciated the charitable aspect of the program.

"In business, you're always worried about the bottom line," she said. "It was nice to not have to have business as our top priority."

Pairing Jmourko's experiences with team research, the group chose to work with the non-profit Ukrainian Children's Aid and Relief Effort, or UCARE Inc., with the goal of sponsoring college-aged students until they graduate.

It costs about $1,000 a year to support a Ukrainian student through college because education is free in Ukraine, Jmourko said. The only money needed is for living expenses.

"At 17 or 18, they're pretty much kicked out of the orphanages," senior computer science major Vlad Tchompalov said. "It's really a tough situation."

The group decided to combine its computer and business skills to create a website that connected Ukrainian students with sponsors.

Using relationships Jmourko developed in Ukraine and funding from the QUEST program and faculty advisors, the team sent disposable cameras with visual instructions to orphans in Ukraine. The children were asked to take photographs of important factors in their lives, which were then sent back to the university where Robinson developed and posted them to the "Darkroom" on the website.

"Pictures are a universal language," Robinson said. "I wanted to make it fun to interact with the students. We didn't want it to be like other charitable sites that make you feel bad - we wanted it to be uplifting."

The team has no official count for the number of site visitors, but so far they have raised several hundred dollars.

"It's not as much as we had hoped for, but it's a start," Jmourko said.

The team has said its biggest challenge has been getting the word out to possible sponsors.

After tying for first place in a QUEST Capstone competition at the end of the fall semester, Jmourko was featured on PBS for her program, which was the team's first step toward greater publicity. The group also hopes to gain corporate sponsorship, possibly from camera companies like Kodak and Nikon.

Robinson thinks social networking can play a significant role as well.

"If one person spread the word to their friends and family, and they do the same, the message will be spread virally," he said.

When most of the team graduates in May, the members plan to stay connected to the project and to bring the skills they gained into the workforce. Robinson hopes to develop Web pages and work with non-profits to create more sites similar to Shutters4Scholars.

The team also hopes to spread the project to other countries to give students around the world the opportunity to tell their own stories.

"One of our goals was to create a site that would be self-sustaining," Jmourko said. "We hope to expand this to include children [outside Ukraine.]"

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