Carolyn Lancour

War takes more from us than the lives of soldiers. It also damages or destroys buildings, infrastructure, and economies. Area branch manager Carolyn Lancour dug into the links between war and poverty for one of the articles she wrote for the Borgen Project, which are now available online.

As we reported last autumn, Carolyn was selected for a 12-week internship with Borgen, a global nonprofit focused on fighting world poverty. Along with fundraising and contacting elected officials to lobby for foreign aid for poor countries, she also researched and wrote 10 articles for the online Borgen Magazine.

Check out Carolyn’s stories for Borgen Magazine:
• War and Poverty: Looking Back at the Balkans’ History
• COVID-19 Could Not Stop Help for Haiti
• The NFL Waterboys Providing Clean Water
• Wisconsin Senator Sponsors Aid to Immigrant and Refugee Communities
You can also download a PDF of them here.

Four of those articles have now been published. The dates on the articles reflect when she wrote them, Carolyn noted, although it took a bit longer before the stories were posted. She said Borgen was fairly hands-off throughout the writing process, giving her a lot of latitude to choose what topics to cover.

“I wanted them to get hits,” she said, since the primary objective was to raise awareness of the scale and severity of global poverty. To that end, she tried to pick attention-grabbing subject matter and be mindful of including crucial keywords. “Taking SEO (search-engine optimization) into account was huge.”

She received feedback on her first article, and after that, worked largely independently once topics were approved. She was required to draw on at least five different sources to produce original content, and most of her research was done online. For her story on war and poverty, she interviewed Southridge assistant branch manager Zoran Saric, whose Serbian family fled Croatia as refugees 30 years ago, when ethnic conflicts intensified in the Balkans region of eastern Europe.

“Zoran looks like he’s from around here, but English is really his second language and he has had experiences that most people in this area have never gone through,” Carolyn said. “I really appreciated that he was willing to share his story.”

“She said, ‘Hey, would you mind if I wrote about you?'” Zoran said. “And I thought that was pretty cool that she took the time to interview me — she is the only person who has approached me about it. Talking about it brought back a lot of memories from my childhood. There are things you don’t think about until someone asks you.”

Carolyn also talked to North Shore Bank customer Dr. Anita Frew of Transformation Ministries for an article on Haiti.

Of the 10 articles she produced, only four have been published so far. Because the editing process can take a while, it’s possible that more will eventually be posted online, like the piece she wrote about the ONE Campaign, an antipoverty nonprofit founded by U2 lead singer Bono. In the meantime, she continues to fundraise, advocate, and volunteer using what she’s learned from her work with the Borgen Project.

“When you get involved in reaching out to politicians and other people, you see what they stand for. It’s pretty eye-opening,” she said. “You can have an impact just by raising awareness of what so many people all over the world are up against.”