High Five World Hunger in the Face

Wuo Wear duo, students
to attempt to break world record

Trine University students are setting out to break a world record, while raising funds for a worthy cause, tonight in the University Center Mall.

The Public Relations Planning and Campaigns class and Wuo Wear, a 501(c)3 organization founded by Trine juniors Robert Blake and JR Wuo, will host “High Five World Hunger in the Face” tonight at 8:30 p.m. to raise funds for the duo’s mission trip to Gbhan, Liberia, in December.

Those who attend can take part in an attempt to break the world record for the number of consecutive high fives. The record currently is 94.

Free food will be available in Whitney Commons Café after participants high five. People also can make holiday cards for children in Africa. Blake and Wuo, whose family is from Liberia, will give them to children while on their mission trip.

Wuo Wear will accept donations and sell wristbands and T-shirts at the event, with all proceeds going to their mission trip.

Blake and Wuo plan to help build a new school, as well as purchase school supplies and rice for families in rural villages.

Wuo Wear was founded when Blake and Wuo were in high school in Defiance, Ohio. The organization’s mission is to make the world aware of its fixable problems, inspire people to change those problems for the better, and help those who are less fortunate than most. Since its founding, Wuo Wear has given 100 percent of its proceeds to nonprofits, including World Vision, relief efforts in Haiti and South Africa and orphanages in Kenya.

After Blake and Wuo graduate in December 2012, they plan to devote all their time and energy to their nonprofit.

“We’ll never give up on a positive change. It’s all about constant progression, and never becoming complacent. It’s worth it for the lives we change. We can’t do it alone, but we will take the lead,” Wuo recently told a local newspaper. “At first it started as a feel-good kind of story, and a way to sell some T-shirts and help people out. Upon further research we discovered some pretty disturbing things: that one in 16 homes holds a child who doesn’t know where his/her next meal is going to come from, that every 3.5 seconds someone dies from a hunger-related issue.”

For more information about Wuo Wear visit worldunitedorg.org or contact Wuo at gswuo@my.trine.edu or (419) 438-3262.

To share your news, contact Trine University communication specialist Lindsay Winslow Brown at winslowbrownl@trine.edu.