Advice from The Gambia: “When we collaborate, our impact becomes even greater”

As college students head back to campus this week,  I cannot stop thinking about Balanding Menneh, a young man I met from The Gambia.

Balanding is a junior at the University of Arizona. He’s studying biological sciences, and started his own nonprofit called Rural Impact. Its mission is to empower women and farmers in rural communities to become food secure, and to eradicate hunger in a sustainable way.

I met Balanding at the Universities Fighting World Hunger Conference last spring, when I presented him with the Clinton Hunger Leadership Award on behalf of Stop Hunger Now. He was poised and articulate as he accepted the award on a stage in front of 300 college students and faculty from across the country.

But before the banquet, Balanding shared his story with me about his education in his native country, and what led him to the University of Arizona.

At a young age, Balanding had to walk three hours to elementary school. Since there was not a high school in his village, it was arranged for him to travel and stay with a guardian several hours from home. He said his guardian taught him “to be the best I can, and excel in anything I do.”

His hard work in school paid off. Balanding was one of only two people from The Gambia that was awarded the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship, a four-year scholarship awarded to promising young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa. He said he never dreamed he could attend college in the U.S. After he graduates, his ultimate goal is to help his people back home. He spent this past summer in Senegal studying locust outbreaks and how they impact crops.

Balanding told me, “We can’t say it is possible to end hunger, then sit back. Hunger is a global problem. It affects all of us directly or indirectly.”

This fall, I’ll be thinking about Balanding, and what’s ahead in his college career and beyond. His advice works for anyone wanting to make a difference in the world: “I have come to understand that ending hunger requires collaboration because it is an extensive problem that no single entity can solve. We can make a tremendous difference individually, but when we collaborate with others and share best practices, that is when our impact becomes even greater.”

“We can make a tremendous difference individually, but when we collaborate with others and share best practices, that is when our impact becomes even greater.” –Balanding Menneh