Campaigns class works with football great
By Stacia Reineke
J Alumni News staff
Turns out there were only two degrees of separation between Nick Lowery, a 17-year-veteran of the National Football League, and students at the journalism college.
The connection that brought Lowery together with Nebraska advertising students began at Harvard University. Lowery was working with Emily Hanson as a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. The project designed a pilot curriculum in nation-building for Native youth, a curriculum to promote self-governance and leadership in tribes across the country.
As it happens, Hanson's mother, Nancy Mitchell, is an advertising professor at UNL, and Hanson suggested the Harvard Project might make a good client for one of the advertising department's campaigns classes.
And so it was.
Nation Building for Native Youth became one of the clients for the classes' fall semester. The project is an extension of work Lowery began when he was a kicker with the Kansas City Chiefs and established a charitable foundation, Kick with Nick, to aid children with disabilities. The longest-running fund-raising program by a player in NFL history was designed to provide the resources to help the children help themselves.
Lowery soon came to realize that disability is a broad concept. "We all have a journey to find what our particular shortcoming is," Lowery said. That realization led him to develop Adult Role Models for Youth, a joint effort with the YMCA, that recruited caring adults as mentors for at-risk youth. ARMY later became known as Youth Friends and evolved to include 37 agencies and the Kansas City, Mo., Public School District.
Seven years ago Lowery was asked to start a similar program for Native American tribes. Native Vision was born as a year-round effort with the NFL Players Association and the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian and Alaskan Native Health. The highlight of the Native Vision foundation is a three-day Sports and Life Skills Camp held each summer. Professional athletes from four major sports mentor youth of tribes from across the country. The youth also participate in cultural events, attend workshops to learn marketable skills and benefit from self-esteem building experiences.
Lowery came to the UNL campus in September to meet with the campaigns classes and discuss the challenge before them. He asked the classes to legitimize and establish brand awareness for a brand new program with the goal of creating a whole new social value in tribes across the country: Nation Building for Native Youth.
Seniors Rachel Klemme and Katie Wolfe were the account executives for the two class teams. Klemme and her group decided to look into the steps taken to promote other Lowery programs. They also conducted research on Native American culture and non-Native American educators. Wolfe's group decided to focus on understanding stereotypes and conducting primary and secondary research to back their decisions. "We set goals to establish brand awareness and legitimize the program with Native youth and adults," Klemme said.
Lowery came to UNL again in late October to see how the campaigns were coming along. He talked about the importance of building leaders from within. "We need to lead by example in this country, and if we can heal from within, it will help us be leaders in the world," Lowery said.
Lowery said he was impressed with the "very sharp" students he had the chance to work with at UNL. "It does a lot to say Nebraska is about diversity and is symbolic of a larger message; that you can go to a place that's very 'white' and find a lot of compassion," Lowery said.
Klemme and Wolfe said they enjoyed the experience as well. "You learn something about yourself anytime you work with someone or cultures that you don't know much about," Wolfe said.
