Jessica Newman ’01
| GUATEMALA
All photos: JustWorld International
EQUESTRIANS
FOR A JUST WORLD Jessica Newman ’01 balanced her AUP education with a career in competitive show jumping. She went on to combine her passion for the equestrian and her desire to tackle poverty by creating JustWorld International – and, in the process, she brought a community together.
How can we build a just world? It’s an enormous question that can’t be answered by one person – to make headway, it takes a huge community working together. Luckily, I’ve never been alone in tackling this mission: as founder and president of JustWorld International, I have a whole team working with me to improve the lives of disadvantaged children around the world. The charity, which draws support from the international equestrian community, supports more than 7,000 children in Guatemala, Honduras, Cambodia and the United States by providing access to lifechanging programs across four main fields: 21
AU P M AGAZ I NE
education, nutrition, health and hygiene, and cultural development. We’ve recently announced an exciting new partnership with the Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI), the international body that governs equestrian competitions worldwide. It’s a fantastic opportunity to grow our community and help even more children across the globe. The equestrian community has long been an important part of my life; I started competing in top-level show jumping at a young age. It was for this reason that my AUP experience was unique: I did Fall semester eight years
running as I was balancing my studies with my sporting career. I cherished my time at the University both because it allowed me to develop my intellectual side and because of the independence it offered. When you’re an athlete, you need to develop independence quickly, and a standard American college degree wasn’t going to give me the freedom to accomplish that. I also wanted to study in a place that had a diverse, international community that would make me feel at home. That place was AUP.
