UC Business Student's Team Wins National Award for Humanitarian Campaign

Justin Mohr, BBA ’13, an international business major in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, mentored a team of students from Cincinnati’s Withrow High School to win a national Red Cross competition to create awareness for a humanitarian issue that explores armed conflict and the effects of war on human life.

Mohr’s team chose the topic of child soldiers and named their project Innocence to Evil for the American Red Cross' International Humanitarian Law Action Campaign. His team consisted of students from Somalia, El Salvador, Nepal, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi — all places where the team members witnessed the fallout from living in a combat zone. Life in a Red Cross refugee camp that provided food, shelter and education was a part of those experiences and a reason why many of the students participated in the awareness campaign.

To promote their cause, Mohr and his team created a video, launched a Facebook page, and distributed literature and made digital presentations throughout the city.

The American Red Cross selected their campaign as the national winner, and the team was awarded an all-expenses paid trip in May 2013 to present their campaign to officials at the organization’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C.