Student-Athletes Leading Social Change
Darragh McDermott spends a lot of time practicing her dives, but she’s also been diving into something else during her college career: Student-Athletes Leading Social Change.
Founded in 2009, SALSC involves student-athletes from various colleges and universities, with the UI, Michigan and Lehigh the most active so far, according to co-founder CeCe Marizu, a former UI swimmer and now a graduate assistant in the Irwin Academic Services Center on campus.
“I just couldn’t wait to get involved,” said McDermott, who last year went to Ecuador with SALSC and worked on building a school, spent time with a girls’ club and funded a water system. “That was probably the best 10 days of my life,” she said. This school year, McDermott, a junior from Mokena, Ill., majoring in English and secondary education, is a co-coordinator of the UI chapter.
Marizu said her dream is to see SALSC spread nationwide and is working on bringing student-athletes together for a service project this summer in Chicago. Marizu’s father is from Nigeria.Travel there as a child had given her an interest in service abroad even before involvement with SALSC, she said. In her time at the UI, however, and through visits to local schools through Hometown Heroes, she also had come to realize how much kids look up to student-athletes and how much of a role model they can be.