Miki Doan, '14

Miki Doan, '14

October 29, 2012
Community engagement gives Bonner Scholar context for economics major

Economics major and Bonner Scholar Miki Doan, ’14, has been engaged with the community ever since she arrived in Richmond. But her work has also taken her well beyond the city limits, with Thailand, Vietnam, Uganda, and the Dominican Republic serving as global classrooms to reflect on her social work interests.

As a sophomore, Doan attended a Givology Spiders meeting where she was introduced to the Circle of Peace School. Givology is an online community and marketplace that connects microfinance donors with smaller educational community initiatives around the world. The University’s chapter focuses on supporting the Ugandan school through finance and awareness.

Doan ended up spending her summer abroad in Uganda, working for the school and handling financial operations, such as budgeting and bookkeeping, for the school’s side businesses — chicken and crop farms.

“I looked at their expenses and revenues and tried to figure out how to cut costs and expand the businesses using alternative ways of investing,” Doan says. “It was really interesting to apply what I learned in the business school to a nonprofit.”

While working in Uganda was a unique opportunity to combine economics and social justice, it wasn’t Doan’s first experience applying her classroom knowledge of microfinance to an organization abroad. The summer after her freshman year, Doan spent one month in Pattya, Thailand where she worked with women in Step Ahead, a community development organization.

“The headquarters in Bangkok basically works with microloans,” she says. “But the one in Pattaya gives women another way of making money, so that they can stay out of prostitution.”

Throughout her sophomore year, Doan also spent time working with an orphanage in Vietnam where she taught English, and took part in the Social Entrepreneurship living-learning community. In addition to traditional classroom lectures, the Social Entrepreneurship community traveled to the Dominican Republic where they applied tactics for inspiring donor behavior to develop a fundraising campaign for a local nonprofit.

“It was great to see how much I learned and developed throughout the whole year,” she says. “In the living-learning program we learned both the business side and the psychology side. We learned about different concepts and theories to attract donors and volunteers.”

Travel may have opened Doan’s eyes to the inner workings of social justice issues abroad, but she also works to address social needs at home. As a Bonner Scholar, Doan has committed to spending 10 hours every week at Henderson Middle School in Northside Richmond. She says that Bryan Figura, director of the Bonners Scholars program, has helped her understand and reflect on service in a first-world country.

“Sometimes it was really challenging to serve in a developed country after working in countries like Uganda, Vietnam, and Thailand,” she says. “All the poverty, all the struggle — people don’t have the necessities to continue to live.

“It was difficult for me to balance why I’m here and I think Bryan has really helped me. From our conversations, I dove deeper into the impact I had on the communities, and experiences and lessons from which I could learn to serve people further. Even in developed countries there are so many issues that need to be worked on.”