UMW senior is big man on campus and in Central America

By Erica Mason ’07

Shin Fujiyama can barely walk five feet on campus without someone stopping him to say hi. This slightly-built soccer player is known by nearly every student on the University of Mary Washington’s Fredericksburg campus. But while Shin pauses to talk organic chemistry with a classmate or speak Japanese with a UMW staff member, his mind is likely thousands of miles from Fredericksburg.
He may be thinking about 10-year-old Carmen, who lives in a cardboard shack. With her parents too ill to work, she sells oranges and takes care of her two little brothers.

Or, perhaps, he’s wondering about Marvin, a 14-year-old boy with a throbbing toothache, who walks miles to dig through trashcans seeking food and anything salvageable to resell.
Shin, a pre-med and international affairs major, seems an unlikely savior for abandoned children in a ravaged area of Central America. However, rescuing the Carmens and Marvins in a remote part of Honduras has become Shin’s calling.

This calling has colored his life and his career choice. And it has transformed a campus a continent away.

Since the fall of 2004, this 118-pound dynamo has managed to find time in his schedule and room in his heart for nine trips to the refugee community of Siete de Abril, located in El Progreso, Honduras. He and his sister, William and Mary senior Cosmo Fujiyama, founded a nonprofit organization called Students Helping Honduras. The goal is to build 71 new houses so that each family in the coastal town, which was devastated in 1998 by Hurricane Mitch, can live in a safe, dry home. Students Helping Honduras also wants to provide the village with electricity, a water purification system, and decent toilets.

“At the end of the day, you’re not going to save the whole world,” Shin said. “But what I can do is at least do my best to help what’s in front of me.”
He has put the plight of these Honduran refugees at the forefront of his life – and on the radar screens of countless others in the UMW community. Passionate about this cause, Shin engages in few other activities, save his beloved soccer.

“I don’t have time for a girlfriend,” he joked.

The preoccupation began several years ago, when Shin signed up to go on a Honduran mission trip with the UMW group Campus Christian Community. Overwhelmed by the dire conditions he saw, Shin was especially moved by the impoverished children, many of whom were homeless and none of whom were educated.

Shortly thereafter, Shin enrolled in a UMW economics class that functioned like a charitable foundation. The objective of the class was to award money to a noprofit organization. The money was provided by Fredericksburg resident Doris Buffett, founder of the Sunshine Lady Foundation.

Using the skills he learned in his economics class and the connection with Buffett, Shin transformed his desire to help Honduran children into action. First, he changed Students Helping Honduras, originally a campus club, into a 501(c)3.

“I advised Shin to set up a nonprofit organization so people donating could deduct it from their taxes,” said Greg Stanton, UMW James Farmer professor in human rights. “It’s a definite incentive for people to give.”
By spring 2006, Shin already had made significant inroads in Siete de Abril, including helping build a school. To show their appreciation, the people there gave it a special name: the Shin Fujiyama School of Hope.

But Shin wanted to do more. Back in Fredericksburg, he organized a community-wide walk-a-thon to raise money, and he doubled the impact by getting the Sunshine Lady Foundation to agree to match the event proceeds. With the match, the 2006 walk-a-thon raised a whopping $148,000.

This spring, Buffett offered Shin another challenge: raise $100,000 and she would double it. But only if that amount were raised.

A big boost came in late March when Students Helping Honduras won $20,000 in a national fund-raising contest. GrabLife GiveLife, created by college students and supported by Dodge, is an online competition involving charitable events on college campuses throughout the country. The first event that garnered 20,000 online student votes – cast through the GrabLife GiveLife website – would receive a $20,000 check from Dodge.

Students Helping Honduras was the clear-cut winner.

Shin was confident the group could raise the remaining $100,000, and he was right. An April 2007 walk-a-thon on campus drew students from universities across Virginia, Fredericksburg-area residents, and Buffett, who walked the first one-mile lap with Shin. By the end of the day, Students Helping Honduras had taken in $110,000, more than enough to qualify for the Sunshine Lady Foundation matching grant.

And money continues to come in. Shin’s goal of providing new homes for more than 70 families is within reach.

Others might not have had the courage to face such a goal, but Shin is accustomed to dreaming big, and to overcoming obstacles.

The second of four children, Shin was born in Japan, but moved shortly thereafter to the United States, settling in the Northern Virginia suburb of Falls Church. At age 4, he was diagnosed with a rare heart problem called ventricular septal defect. He had a hole in the wall between the heart’s left and right ventricles. This prevented him from playing sports.

“I vaguely remember being in the hospital, them sticking me with needles and wires. I had no idea what was happening,” Shin said.

Within several years, the hole in his heart closed naturally, and Shin was soon out on the soccer field. “I was probably the worst player out there when I started,” he said.

That changed. Shin, nearly always the smallest player on the pitch, trained rigorously. By his senior year of high school, he was captain of his school’s varsity soccer team and its most valuable player. He now is the president of UMW’s club soccer organization.

A heart condition was not Shin’s only health obstacle. At age 2, he developed severe eczema, an inflammation of the skin, most often occurring on the face.

“It looked like I had poison ivy all the time,” Shin said. “Girls did not want to talk to me.”

Occasionally, the pain was so severe that he could barely open his eyes or smile.

Yet, Shin counts this problem, which has also cleared up naturally with age, as a blessing. Dealing with ostracism at such a young age allowed him to understand life as an outsider.

Although he was accepted at UMW when he was in high school, Shin decided to delay enrollment. “I didn’t want to go to college right away. But I did want to play soccer,” Shin said. “When you think of soccer, you think of Brazil.”

In the summer of 2001, Shin traveled there alone and rented an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. His parents were supportive of the trip.

“They wanted me to develop my character by having me live alone in a foreign country,” Shin said.
Shin mingled with the locals and played soccer nearly every day. After playing a four-hour pickup game one night, a famished Shin hurried to a bakery to grab something to eat. With just a few coins in his pocket, he could afford only one small loaf of bread. As Shin was leaving the bakery, his eyes met those of a young boy who appeared to be homeless. Shin gave him the bread, and the boy replied with an enthusiastic “obrigado” –“thank you” in Portuguese.

“Just seeing him being filled up, it filled up my heart,” Shin said. “It meant more to me than eating that bread. I wasn’t hungry anymore.”

And a seed was planted.

In the fall of 2002, Shin began his freshman year at UMW. He played on the school’s varsity soccer team and became involved in the Human Rights Club. The summer after freshman year, he went back to Brazil, witnessing the same poverty he had seen a year before. During that trip, Shin had an epiphany: somehow, he would help the people of Latin America.

At the beginning of his junior year, Shin saw a flyer on campus advertising a mission trip organized by the Campus Christian Community. Although not previously involved with the CCC, Shin signed up. The focus of the trip was outreach to homeless and abused women and children.

“Shin was so taken with the kids that first time,” said Bob Azzarito, CCC’s campus minister and a chaperone on the trip.

On the return flight, Shin sat next to Henry Osburn, a philanthropist and business owner from Milwaukee. He told Shin about his effort to help a failing orphanage called Copprome in El Progreso. Osburn needed a translator. Learning that Shin was fluent in Spanish, Osburn offered an all-expense paid trip to Copprome that spring.

“I brushed off my mother’s fear that this guy would kidnap me or sell me into slavery,” Shin said. “I wanted to see this Copprome place, and it did not matter that a complete stranger would take me there. I was determined to plant my foot in Honduras and make a difference.”

Shin’s decision to return was worth it. When Osburn showed him the financially-strapped orphanage, it was a turning point for the UMW student. Founded in 1982, Copprome is run by nuns and other Hondruan natives. It houses 70 orphans between the ages of 4 and 18. Many have been exposed to prostitution, drugs, and all forms of abuse. Most children were abandoned by their parents, while other children witnessed their parents’ deaths, usually from starvation or drug use, Shin said.

Already malnourished, the orphans of Copprome have a slim chance of breaking out of the poverty cycle in Honduras, which is generally considered the poorest country in Central America. This became clear to Shin, who saw children bloated and discolored because of the parasites that infect their famished bodies.
Returning to the UMW campus, Shin could not get Copprome out of his mind. He immediately started thinking of ways to help the orphans. He knew his job as a dishwasher at Seacobeck would not help him raise money. So, each day for more than a month, he sat outside the Eagle’s Nest collecting change and talking to people about the plight of the Copprome orphans.

Nick Winborne, a junior philosophy major, paid attention.

“Shin showed me pictures [of the children at Copprome], but it’s such a different experience first hand,” said Winborne, who immediately got involved and accompanied Fujiyama to Honduras in December of 2005.

Winborne is now a committee member for Students Helping Honduras.

Another person who paid attention was Shin’s sister, Cosmo. She, too, first accompanied him to Honduras in 2005. After journeying to Nicaragua the year before, Cosmo, like her brother, had a strong desire to return to Latin America.

Witnessing such poverty, she said, “leaves you with a heartbroken curiosity.”

Spending lots of time together helping the children created a close bond between the siblings, even though they fought for attention when they were younger.

“I feel so much of a partner with him on this,” Cosmo said. “We are on the same wave length and have the same philosophy.”

It’s a mystery what motivates Shin and his sister. But those who know him have several theories.
“Shin is pure of heart. He didn’t grow up in a church. No one told him he was supposed to do this, that this is what good people do.” Azzarito said. “This comes from his heart. His response to the kids is untarnished.”

Prof. Greg Stanton’s assessment is this: “Shin Fujiyama is a force. Packed into his compact physical frame is spiritual nuclear energy.”

Stanton added, “A person dedicated to justice, which is the purpose of Shin Fujiyama’s life, is a force that will move mountains.”

Shin may not be moving mountains, but he is saving lives.

In the summer of 2005, he returned to Honduras, this time not only assisting the orphanage, but also getting to know the locals in the nearby village of Siete de Abril.

“The word ‘poverty’ is not enough to describe its condition,” Shin said of Siete de Abril. “Its people live off food they find digging through trash, and sleep in shacks made of cardboard and tin.”

In order to provide some sort of consistent food supply, Shin helped the villagers plant a vegetable garden and establish an underground piping system that brought in running water.

Shin soon learned, however, that the water from the nearby river was highly polluted. Deciding to take the matter in his own hands, Shin spent last year’s spring break attending a week-long program in Mississippi on engineering and water purification. What he learned will help him build the people of Siete de Abril a safe and healthy water system.

“That is what I have learned at Mary Washington,” Shin said. “Problem solving. It’s all about finding ways to solve a problem and doing them.”

In fact, a desire to help solve the children’s medical problems led Shin to add the pre-med major. After seeing many orphans suffer from illnesses that could have easily been prevented with proper medicine, Shin began taking chemistry and biology classes.

He remembers one time when 13-year-old Merlin was having a seizure. While Merlin foamed at the mouth, Shin had to hold him down, simultaneously calming the other children. The orphanage had not been able to afford medicine for Merlin’s attacks, which resulted in the terrifying experience.
“The kids can’t get medicine; they have to sleep on the floor because there are no mattresses and no fans. With no circulating air, it’s cooler to sleep on the floor,” Shin said.

He added, “I actually don’t really like studying science – it’s the results from studying it that I like.”
Shin is results-oriented. When he decided to film the hardships of the Honduran children, Shin didn’t know the first thing about using a video camera. But he soon learned, and has made two documentaries since then.

His most recent film features Carmen, the 10-year-old whom Shin counts among his dearest friends. With the suffering she endures on a daily basis, it is hard to understand Carmen’s joyfulness.
“Carmen is a leader. She’s very special,” Shin said. “She told me: ‘Shin, I’ve got this dream. This one wish that one day all of my friends in my village are gonna have a real home.’”

Shin, who will postpone his enrollment in medical school for this effort, said he was willing to do whatever it takes to make Carmen’s dream come true. He spoke to countless schools and groups about his cause, approached UMW administrators and faculty for support, and even emailed countless friends personally to remind them to come out for the April walk-a-thon. He and a group of volunteers leave in late May to start construction of 71 homes – one for Carmen’s family and one for each of the other families in the village.

“The ultimate goal is to let the people in Honduras be self-sustainable,” Shin said. “We’re not here to put BAND-AIDs and Scotch tape on the wounds; we are changing things for the long run.

“Doris Buffett taught me that,” he added. “She says, ‘we don’t want to be giving hand-outs, we want to be giving hand-ups.’”

Shin isn’t certain how long that will take, but he does plan to devote the next year of his life to his friends in Honduras.

In fact, after his May 12 graduation, the next stop is Siete de Abril. “I made a promise to Carmen that I would not do anything until I gave her a home,” Shin said.
Not only has he changed the direction of his life, Shin has changed the direction of other students’ lives as well.

“I’ve gained so much perspective and think in terms of others now,” said junior Anna Lowell, a chairperson for Students Helping Honduras who accompanied Shin on a trip to the country for the first time last spring. “He inspires me to realize how much potential I have, and to get up and raise money for other issues.”

“He’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know,” said Nick Winborne.

So far, Shin has motivated more than 75 other college students to accompany him on trips to Honduras. “School is not just about cultivating our minds, it’s about cultivating our hearts,” he said. “When we study things in school, we need to go out and actually see them.”

Other colleges are getting involved, too. In addition to Mary Washington and William and Mary, Students Helping Honduras has chapters at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.

Shin is leaving a lofty legacy.

“I’ve always wanted to be a hero, and I’m a hero to these kids,” Shin said. “But you know what? Anyone can do it.”

Shin believes that life-changing opportunities come once – maybe twice – into each person’s life. He already has been given one, he said: the opportunity to study at the University of Mary Washington. And he refuses to waste the second.

“Three years ago, nobody in Honduras knew about me or UMW,” Shin said. “Now, I’ve got kids there who believe in me and this school.

— Photos courtesy of Students Helping Honduras and The Free Lance-Star. Free Lance-Star photos taken by Scott Neville.