VCU news

By Anthony Langley
Office of Development and Alumni Relations

Vivian Medina-Messner, co-director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Social Media Institute, is constantly amazed by her students’ cultural interactions.

“They’re building bridges and becoming part of a global community,” Medina-Messner said.

Students in the institute, hailing from both VCU and the Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program, work in teams to develop social media campaigns for local nonprofits. They also learn how to brand themselves on social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

They’re building bridges and becoming part of a global community.

“We have to get the ball rolling for them,” said VCU student Yashua Torres, who worked with a team of Iraqi students aiding the nonprofit organization Beds for Kids Inc., which provides beds for the less-fortunate in the Richmond area. The team developed an entire social media strategy that focuses on telling the individual stories of underprivileged children without beds, and created a hashtag, #safedreams, so others can share their own stories.

Other clients are Great Aspirations Scholarship Programs, the Virginia Center for Health Innovation, RVA Music School and Outreach, Sabot at Stony Point, Dress for Success Central Virginia, College Behavior and Emotional Health Initiative, Connor’s Heroes, Virginia Consumer Voices for Healthcare, Youth Life Foundation of Richmond and VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences.

The group working with Sabot at Stony Point, a progressive education school focused on bringing out the inherent knowledge of their students, created the hashtag #sabotstories to share the work of the school’s students and teachers.

“These kids are amazing,” said Michael Farmer, a member of the Sabot at Stony Point team. “We’re just trying to take the work that everybody at this school does and get it out there.”

Showcasing the work of each nonprofit is a goal for all the teams, which have not only improved existing campaigns but in some cases created entire social media presences for their organizations, helping to take the stress off of the organizations themselves and giving them more time to focus on their work.

Outside of working on their campaigns and projects, the exchange students have been busy sharing music, food and culture and taking trips around the city with VCU students. Muntadher Kareem, an Iraqi student working with the College Behavior and Emotional Health Initiative, lights up every time he talks about Richmond.

“I like the green spaces,” Kareem said. “I like to call Richmond the ‘green city.’” His classmates are enjoying their time in Richmond, he said, and they plan to take what they’ve learned back to Iraq to start their own projects, such as an all-woman-led coding project created by previous students.

In past years students who have attended the Social Media Institute have been featured in The Washington Post and mentioned in speeches by President Barack Obama. The program has been run annually since 2010 in a collaboration between the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture in the College of Humanities and Sciences and the Global Education Office.

“The students are doing important work, and stepping out of their comfort zone,” said Marcus Messner, Ph.D, associate professor at the Robertson School. “The group we have now is making relationships that will last them long after they leave.”

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