{"id":40802287090,"date":"2025-01-31T17:15:31","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T22:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802287090"},"modified":"2025-02-05T17:21:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T22:21:51","slug":"monmouth-debate-team-travels-to-india-for-mentoring-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/monmouth-debate-team-travels-to-india-for-mentoring-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Monmouth Debate Team Travels to India for Mentoring Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monmouth University Debate Team members Veronica Belloso, Destiny Goodfriend, Taylor Fenton, Aiden Fornicola, Michael Makfinsky, Sierra Michel, Mariami Ramirez Tuladze, and Brendan Sheehan recently traveled to India for an immersive debate mentoring program with students in the Loreto Rainbow program in Kolkata from Jan. 8-17. The trip was supervised by professors in the Department of Political Science and Sociology, Joe Patten, Ph.D., advisor of the Debate Team, and Rekha Datta, Ph.D., Freed Endowed Chair in Social Sciences.

The Loreto Rainbow School supports Indian girls who grow up in extreme poverty and homelessness by providing housing and an education. The Rainbow program was founded on the vision of the late Sister Cyril Mooney in the 1980s and today represents a partnership of Rainbow Homes programs supporting more than 600 young girl street children.

In addition to exploring the city and learning about the local culture, Monmouth Debate Hawks coached 16 girls in the Rainbow program to prepare for and conduct a debate. This year\u2019s topic was, \u201cResolved: Reserving 50% of seats for women in Parliament will effectively promote gender equality and rights for women in India.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of a week of bonding and training, each of the Rainbow students, accompanied by their Monmouth mentors, presented affirmative and negative arguments with data, examples, and passion. The finale debate was held at the auditorium of Loreto Bowbazar school and drew an audience of about 200 people including students from the Loreto schools in Kolkata, teachers, administrators, parents of the Rainbow children, and well-wishers and friends from across the city. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“None of this would have been possible without our supportive colleagues at Monmouth, and our passionate\u00a0debate coach,” said Datta. “Watching [Dr. Patten] in action is like witnessing magic happen. Under his leadership, the\u00a0debate\u00a0team stole the hearts of everyone we met and worked with on the trip. Because of this, many rescued girl street children in the Rainbow program will be standing a little taller and will have gained a boost to their self-esteem and communication skills. And our students have gained an added meaningfulness to their Monmouth education.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehan wrote about his experience on the winter break trip in an article published in the Jan. 29 issue of The Outlook<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monmouth University students have been visiting the Rainbow program through the International Service Seminar for more than two decades. In 2011, through the Institute for Global Understanding, Monmouth University bestowed the Global Visionary Award to Sister Cyril, who visited the University to receive the award.
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Monmouth University Debate Team members Veronica Belloso, Destiny Goodfriend, Taylor Fenton, Aiden Fornicola, Michael Makfinsky, Sierra Michel, Mariami Ramirez Tuladze, and Brendan Sheehan recently traveled to India for an immersive debate mentoring program with students in the Loreto Rainbow program in Kolkata from Jan. 8-17. The trip was supervised by professors in the Department of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":40802287111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[414,212,444],"tags":[1934],"person":[5053,2931,3580,990,5056,3502,611,3588,2914,3496],"audience":[14,386,11,8,50,1961],"school":[59,26],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802287090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-giving-back","category-monmouth-now","tag-debate-hawks","person-aiden-fornicola","person-brendan-sheehan","person-destiny-goodfriend","person-joseph-patten","person-mariami-ramirez-tuladze","person-michael-makfinsky","person-rdatta","person-sierra-michel","person-taylor-fenton","person-veronica-belloso","audience-alumni","audience-community","audience-current-student","audience-faculty","audience-graduate-student","audience-parent","school-political-science-sociology","school-school-of-humanities-and-social-sciences"],"squareimage":{"id":40802287114,"rendered":"\"MU","original":{"url":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2025\/01\/MUN-India-2025-1-square.jpg","width":974,"height":974}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802287090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802287090"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802287090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802287210,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802287090\/revisions\/40802287210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802287111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802287090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802287090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802287090"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802287090"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802287090"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802287090"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802287090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}