In 2007, when Summer Lewis started to consider returning to school, she recalled thinking, “The problem was that I had too many areas of interest. Economic development, fair trade, sustainability, social justice. How was I going to find a graduate school program that allowed me to pursue all that?” Ms. Lewis found her answer as a Rotary Peace Fellow. She attended the Rotary Peace Center at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, AU.
After graduating, Summer Lewis co-founded True Roots Consulting in Oaxaca, MX. True Roots offers value chain development, project management, and monitoring and evaluation services for social projects in Latin American coffee-farming communities and beyond. Their goal is to foster social responsibility programs to provide options other than violent measures to meet basic needs. “People ask how one little project in one little community makes a difference. But you can’t think of it like that,” she says. “Think about all the Rotary clubs carrying out projects in communities. Now you’re talking about changing the world.”