Name: Eleanor Armstrong
School: College of Arts and Sciences
Major: International Relations and French
Hometown: New York, NY
Activities involved in at Penn:
I’m the Charity Photo Exhibit Co Director for the Penn Society for International Development (PennSID as the cool kids call it), the Outreach Chair of Habitat for Humanity, a Kite & Key Society tour guide, and a proud member of Chi Omega.
What activity are you most involved with?
PennSID
How did you get involved with PennSID?
I first heard about SID during the Fall of my freshman year when I somewhat accidentally wandered into our annual International Development Conference. I ended up staying a while and got to hear a really interesting panel discussion on the role of the private sector in international development. When I heard SID was accepting applications the following Fall, I decided to apply for a position on the Conference Committee and never looked back.
Tell me about your role in SID.
Right now, I am the Co Director for this year’s Charity Photo Exhibit. Each year, SID gathers photos taken by Penn students during their time abroad and auctions them off to raise money for an international development charity. This year, we have collected over fifty amazing photos that we will auction off to raise money for Kids of Dakar, a really wonderful charity that strives to help children in Senegal by making sure they have access to at least one fresh meal per day. The exhibit is this Sunday the 26th of May in Arch from 2 to 6, so everyone should come by!
Tell me a little bit more about PennSID and what you guys do.
We’re basically a really eclectic group of students who are all interested in international development in some form or another. As an organization, we are dedicated to educating ourselves on development issues and then raising awareness on campus by hosting a lot of really unique events like our Charity Photo Exhibit, International Development Conference, and many more. We also have our own consulting branch, the International Impact Team, which works directly with NGOs throughout the developing world.
What’s a favorite memory you have from your time in SID?
My favorite memory from SID was definitely attending this year’s Conference on the Millennium Development Goals. Having spent so much time researching potential speakers from across the country, it was really amazing to hear one of the speakers I’d personally contacted share his experiences.
What’s a Funny or embarrassing story from your time in SID?
I had a pretty awkward run in with my TA during SID orientation this year. To get to know each other better, the entirety of SID was split up into teams by committee and sent around campus on a really fun, kind of crazy scavenger hunt. We were down to the final ten minutes, and my team still needed to record ourselves singing the national anthem of the foreign country of our choosing. As I finished belting out (and completely butchering) the South African national anthem, I looked up to see one of my TAs staring directly at me. I spent the rest of the semester hoping she didn’t recognize me, but she totally called me out on it during our final recitation.