Sindhura Citineni: Woman Without Borders
by JB Shelton

Sindhura Citineni (BSBA ’04) speaks four languages fluently, yet she doesn’t understand the meaning of impossible in English, French, Hindi or Telugu (the state language from Andhra Pradesh). The Hindi language is written in a script called Devanagari, translated as “writing of the gods.” The gods write prolifically to this young woman of Indian heritage: She takes their messages to feed the world, heal the sick and comfort the lost souls, into her heart and around the world.  

The Ultimate Happy Meal
Citineni’s commitment to the underprivileged began three years ago when she started Hunger Lunch (HL), the first undergraduate international hunger relief organization at UNC. Its mission is to fight hunger by initiating sustainable sources of nutrition and instilling community awareness through student-led endeavors, such as fund-raisers of $3, all-you-can-eat lunches of beans and rice.

Citineni uses the word imagine in ways John Lennon would approve. “Imagine,” she says, “the people who could be fed if fast food restaurants actively helped the poor. Imagine a worldwide unified policy designating profits from one menu item for HL.”

Dateline India
“When a country darkens on TheHungerSite.com map, it represents a death from hunger,” Citineni explains. “The ominous flashes penetrate me with visions of children withering into skeletons, their decaying bodies not just numbers, but individuals with lives of immeasurable value.”

In 2003, Citineni ventured to Hyderabad, India, spending three daunting months in Bharat Nagar slums to start the HL Nutrition House for children ages 5 and younger. A Burch Fellowship and Carolina Undergraduate Health Fellowship recipient, she applied her scientific skills and grant funding to create a sustainable source of liquid nutrition for 150 children, with a four-year research study to track the youngsters’ development. 

A Life in Medicine
“My realization of every individual life’s true value led me to India and uncovered a need for proper health care that left me unbearably helpless and staunchly determined,” says Citineni, who dreams of working with Doctors Without Borders. “My life path is to become a doctor who treats people overlooked and unreachable within medical society norms.”

“Medicine fulfills me,” says Citineni, who plans to begin medical school in 2005. Her studies included an academic minor in chemistry and experience as a research assistant in microbiology at UNC Medical School. She envisions changes in the medical school system to give students international exposure.

She quotes Winston Churchill, “You make a living by what you earn, but you make a life by what you give.”

Initially at UNC Kenan-Flagler, Citineni says she longed for her science classes. “But I was starting HL and realized I was precisely where I needed to be,” she says. “My business education from organizational behavior classes to marketing strategies were building blocks of knowledge to create and lead HL.”

Dateline Mexico
Tlapa, Mexico is home to more than 500,000 natives oppressed by locals and government. Their culture and language date back to the Aztecs: Their health care clinic dates back a mere 20 years.

In June 2004, as UNC ambassador for the North American Education Initiative Foundation, Citineni devoted two weeks to the clinic.

Dateline Bolivia
Thirteen thousand feet above sea level, in an e-mail-less community of Jucumarini in the La Paz region, Citineni and seven dedicated HL members spent their summer 2004 vacations. Guided by engineers from Save the Children, funded by $8,000 in HL donations, the students built a micro-irrigation project for 28 families.

“To this moment, I picture the map of flashing countries. But now as a country darkens, I no longer imagine the starving. I only see my patients I can serve.”