Jabriel Hasan

Class of 2015

Jabriel HasanMajor

Communication, B.S. with a Social Entrepreneurship Minor

Bio

Serving as SGA president, carrying a full academic load, and balancing other campus activities and a busy social calendar, Jabriel Hasan had found little time for volunteer work – until the first Saturday he served at the D.C.- area Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s international organization. “We started at 6:30 with morning Mass preceding breakfast, followed by the day’s work of wiping down beds. I saw women who had given their whole lives to service. The nuns had chosen to marry Christ and to see Him in the people who the world so often abandons: the old, the sick and people living in poverty. That morning, my heart changed. What had started as a small volunteer service experience became a foundation for my future.”

The next MondayJabriel paired his bachelor’s in communication with a social entrepreneurship minor in order to focus fully on philanthropic work. An MU Global Ambassador, Jabriel credits the Center for Global Education with igniting his passion to develop a global perspective. He delved deeper into social justice and international business practices when he studied small business in action in Estonia with his Entrepreneurship class. “CGE is one of the main offices on campus that encouraged me to explore the world and be as open to new experiences as possible.” He learned more about conditions in developing nations on a mission trip with Campus Ministry to the Dominican Republic. He served the homeless as an intern with Samaritan Ministry of Greater Washington, coming to have “more compassion and understanding for the diversity of experiences.”

Upon graduation, Jabriel traveled to a rural town in Ethiopia, where he is now mid-way through his two-year service assignment as a Peace Corps Volunteer. “Teaching in a developing country has taught me that change usually happens slowly in small increments, and the process is far from ideaI. I experience the struggles of development work every day when I am given 45 minutes to teach ninth grade English to 100 students – 75 percent of whom lack the fundamental skills necessary to construct five, original, grammatically correct sentences. However, I can strategize small ways to make small differences in the short term, which, by careful planning and implementation, will eventually produce results greater than my original goals and objectives.”    

Jabriel admits that frequent power outages in the country and limited social activity opportunities give him a lot of time to think about life. “What I’ve realized is that the purpose of human life, particularly as a Christian, is to embrace the world with radical empathy … to glimpse it through the eyes of the Creator; to see the world not as nations and borders, but as diverse, divine creation.” He adds, “In retrospect, I see that this was the purpose of my education at Marymount University. I credit Marymount with nurturing the spirit of the sacred heart within me. Ultimately, it is this spirit that has led me and continues to lead me through a life of service.”