MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech juniors Lauren Miller (left) and Lexi Hollar set up a display table from their 2008 study abroad trip to Malawi during the Student International Service Activities Showcase on Monday.

| Greg Esposito

greg.esposito@roanoke.com, 381-1675

BLACKSBURG -- Standing in the lobby of Burruss Hall on Monday, Virginia Tech graduate student Randi Lieberman listed some of the items on her organization's to-do list: schools in Uganda, health care and bridge repair in Haiti, poverty in rural Appalachia.

It's a pretty ambitious list for a student organization started just a few years ago. But the willingness to take on various projects to help people in need appealed to Lieberman when she joined the organization -- Poverty Awareness Coalition for Equality, or PACE -- last year.

"It's not a one-issue group, and that's good for me because I'm sort of all over the place in terms of ideas, of what I believe in," she said during the Student International Service Activities Showcase.

Lieberman wasn't alone as students with grand ideas to address hunger, health, water and infrastructure needs all over the world discussed their projects Monday. They seemed unfazed by the scope of their goals, no matter how broad. It was a fitting group to welcome the night's guest speaker who is the subject of a book titled "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World."

Farmer, a physician and humanitarian whose work as a Harvard Medical School student in one impoverished Haitian village grew into an organization with projects to address health and poverty issues on multiple continents, spoke Monday with students about their plans. Farmer discussed the difficulty of turning good intentions into impactful projects.

Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Humanitarian Dr. Paul Farmer (left) talks with Gaku Fujiyama, a Virginia Tech junior and co-president of the student group Students Helping Honduras, in the atrium of Burruss Hall auditorium on Monday. Fujiyama gave Farmer a bracelet representing his organization.

"I'm so impressed by the students," he said. "They have passion, they have knowledge of the world. So what's the block? The really biggest trap is people get discouraged and then they retreat."

Farmer added that he can't blame them. Frustrations are plenty and the those seeking to profit from aid work -- so-called "Beltway Bandits" -- make it easy to become disillusioned, he said.

But student after student who spoke about their motivations Monday said they are dedicated to see their visions through.

Christie Newman, a graduate student in crop and soil environmental science, has a plan to start a self-sustaining project to create an egg-laying facility to reduce hunger and poverty in a Haitian town. She spent a year in Haiti, where she worked as an English tutor and loves the idea of going back and seeing the project benefit friends she made there.

"I can put a face to who this will be helping," she said.

One table over from Newman, Tech juniors Lauren Miller and Lexi Hollar shared stories of similar life-changing experiences from a study-abroad visit to Malawi last summer. The Malawi-Chibale Project involves students from Tech, Radford University and North Carolina A&T. They're raising funds to provide for food and education in Malawi.

"It's absolutely your passion," Hollar said. "You come back a changed person. ... I wish I could go back this summer."

Farmer, 49 and a professor of medical anthropology at Harvard, splits his time between campus and a project in Rwanda.

Kidder's book about Farmer's work details some of the early struggles of the organization he co-founded in 1987 -- Partners in Health. Volunteers searched for resources that were always outpaced by needs and navigated around bureaucratic obstacles in the U.S. and abroad.

"People have to stick with this for decades," he said. "Even if you can only do a little bit at a time."

Farmer said he chose to come to Tech because he knew of some students through their service work and "I dig engineers."

"I'm always impressed by engineers because, you see, they fix things," he said. "They're like orthopedists."