Class of 2018
Bethany Lake and Samantha Perry were the speakers for the class of 2018. They presented on many topics including the committees the class has created, including: Fundraising, Video production, Steering Committee representatives, Public Relations, Planning induction for the class of 2019, their local partner, Habitat for Humanity, Current events in Zambia, and a Social committee facilitating class bonding and relationship building. As well, they have divided up researcg topics as so: arts and leisure, ecnomy, education, health and public health, environment, hist
ory, religion, political and international relations, and family and gender. They are now looking into issues that affect Zambia and the best initiatives to fix them.
Class of 2017
Olivia Gibson and Klesey Lane spoke on behalf of the Periclean Scholars class of 2017. They began by saying, “though we have had our fair share of setbacks, we are grateful to stand before you and say that our class is making progress. Last year we decided to focus on sustainable agriculture in Namibia and formed a partnership with Ecology Action. This organization educates others on a self-sustainable farming method called grow biointensive farming. This method yields 6 to 8 times more food and reduces water usage to less than a third of conventional farming methods. The method is labor and time efficient and well-suited for Namibia’s climate.” This semester, they are pursuing their contacts in Namibia and are hoping to find organizations that will want to share their newfound knowledge of how to grow biointensively and promote both sustainable farming and Ecology Action’s mission in Namibia. They are excited to expand this network to include Namibia’s Polytechnic University and the Finnish Emba
ssy in Namibia. They have also pushed forward with our fundraising efforts on campus with a car wash, bake sale, and a gofundme page.Through fundraising they have donated both to the Ekamba community garden, which is using sustainable agriculture to help a food insecure community in Namibia and Ecology Action’s African Symposium on grow biointensive farming, which is taking place this November in Kenya.
Class of 2016
This semester, the Class of 2016 faced one of the most challenging experiences thus far, ending one of their partnerships. At the beginning of this semester, their partner Summit in Honduras decided to discontinue their partnership, cutting ties with their class. This taught their class that maintaining partnerships takes purposeful and honest communication, common ground on expectations, and the ability to truly listen and understand where someone else is coming from.They have continued work with their partner Hope for Honduran Children, 
who works with youth and community development in two different towns in Honduras.
Students from their Periclean Scholars cohort will go to Honduras during this Winter Term. They will be building more genuine, human relationships with the individuals served by Hope for Honduran Children. Other members will stay on campus, where they’ll be working to educate Elon about Honduras, fundraising for their projects, writing deeper reflections on their Periclean years, and collaborating with their locally-based partner, LUPE. Their work with LUPE has involved working on starting ESL classes, finding connections on campus to provide a volunteer base for the classes, and starting to write a grant for the program costs of the classes.
Finally, this semester they have also been continuing their efforts towards planning a business summit titled People, Planet, Profit to promote and educate about sustainable business. Through this conference they not only hope to bridge the gap between the college of arts and sciences and the business school, but to promote the fact that sustainable and ethical practices and profits are not mutually exclusive.
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