Two Smeal Students Travel To Romania With Habitat For Humanity

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (September 28, 2006) – Two Smeal College of Business students spent 10 days in Romania this month working with local families, community leaders from Austin, Texas, and students from four other U.S. universities to refurbish a Soviet-era apartment building through Habitat for Humanity International's Global Village Program.

Jeff Kranzel, junior in accounting and Spanish, and Scott Walters, senior in finance, also got to explore some of Romania on the trip, which was organized and funded by the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation. Kranzel and Walters are both recipients of the Mitte Foundation’s $20,000 scholarship.

Upon arriving in Bucharest on Sept. 1, the participants embarked on a weekend tour of Romania organized by the Mitte Foundation. The group explored the city and the Romanian countryside, including several castles and monasteries in Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains.

Following the weekend of sightseeing, Kranzel, Walters, and other Mitte team members arrived in Pitesti, Romania, to begin six days of work with three Romanian families to begin converting a two-story building into 12 family apartments.

Their first project was to dig ditches for pipes to bring fresh water to the apartments. Prior to their arrival, the small, one-room apartments lacked running water and a bathroom. Once the ditches were completed, the team began to lay pipe, remove walls, expand the size of the apartments, and add a second room each one.

For both Kranzel and Walters, one of the highlights of the trip was the interaction with the local residents and the children who played near the construction site. At one point, the entire team took up a collection among themselves to purchase toys, diapers, and medicine for local babies and children. The supplies were then delivered to Rusescu Pediatric Hospital in Bucharest, along with receiving blankets handmade by the mother of a Texas State student. Rusescu attends to abandoned infants from the local area.

Kranzel said he was originally interested in the experience not just to help people, but for the opportunity to spend 10 days in Europe. What he got, he said, was far more than a vacation.

"It truly was a life-changing experience," he said. "The trip really made me appreciate what we have here in the United States. When you consider that many Romanians can't afford to meet basic needs like food or proper shelter, it makes many of our problems seem trivial."

He said that some of the people he met in Pitesti regularly worked 20-hour shifts for a salary of about $150 a month.

Walters was fascinated by the economic change he witnessed taking place in Romania. "From a business student's perspective, it was very interesting to the see the preparations under way in the country for its entrance into the European Union and its monetary conversion to the Euro," he said.

Both Kranzel and Walters say the experience is something they will not soon forget.

"We all know how important philanthropy is and that it's important to be good, generous corporate citizens; but it's so easy to forget in the United States," Kranzel said. "But this trip burned it into my memory. I won't forget what it's like in Romania. And that desire to give back—whether it's here or abroad—is something that I won’t push aside again. It's part of my life now."

The Texas-based Mitte Foundation is a charity dedicated to fighting poverty and ignorance around the world. As part of its mission, the foundation funds scholarships for graduate and undergraduate students at several universities. Recipients of the scholarships—undergraduate Mitte Scholars and graduate Mitte Fellows—receive $5,000 annually from the foundation.

Participation in the Romanian Habitat for Humanity build was limited to Mitte Scholars and Fellows at participating schools. In addition to Smeal, Indiana University, Ohio State University, Texas A&M University, and Texas State University sent students on the trip. It was up to each school to determine which Mitte scholarship recipients could attend. Kranzel and Walters were selected as the Smeal participants based on an essay competition.

Some photographs of the trip are available online, courtesy of Amanda Wente, an Ohio State Mitte Scholar, at media.smeal.psu.edu/zine/100106/romania/.

For more on the Mitte Scholarship Program at Smeal, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/mitte. The Mitte Foundation is online at www.mittefoundation.org.