Davis names 'Peace' grant recipients

Author: Michelle Constant

The Kathryn Wasserman Davis organization awarded $10,000 grants this spring to three groups from the College for proposals they designed for 100 Projects for Peace. The grants are to be used to launch these student initiatives this summer. The College has allotted an additional $3,000 funding for each of the winning projects, and has pledged to independently sponsor two additional projects.

The contest was devised as a celebratory measure for Kathryn Wasserman Davis' 100th birthday. According to the 100 Projects for Peace Web site, Davis is an accomplished internationalist and philanthropist who decided to donate $1 million to this movement "to help young people launch some immediate initiatives...that will bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world."

According to Daphne Lasky '07, President of the College Liebowitz informed the participants that they had been awarded the grants in an e-mail on March 15.

"I was so afraid that it wasn't real, and so I printed the e-mail out and had a friend read it, just to be sure," said Lasky. "To hear that someone values and supports the kind of work that I want to do matters so much. It is changing my idea of what is possible."

Lasky's project, "Building a Peaceful Future: A Workshop for the Old City of Jerusalem," will address the division of the Israelites and the Palestinians within the city of Jerusalem. Its goal is working towards freedom of access to all religious sites in order to make Jerusalem a shared capital region. According to Lasky, this will make the walls surrounding the city serve as international borders and the gates will serve as "check-points."

After returning from Jerusalem this fall, Lasky will hold afternoon-long workshops at colleges, where students can participate and work together to address the division within the city and design new borders, while addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She will compare students' idealism to physical realities that can be put in place.

Lasky's project was developed from a sketchbook drawing she had made two years ago in an Introduction to Architecture class.

"I am excited to bring the concept into reality as a design piece," said Lasky. "It's a great opportunity to pursue something I was already working on."

Lasky said that her project is important to her on a personal level. Her family has moved between Israel and the United States for the past few generations.

"Having been educated in a liberal arts education," said Lasky, "I find it important that a country that matters to me is a just place to live. I want to be the one to make that happen."

According to the proposal for "Storytelling in Uganda," submitted by sophomores, Aylie Baker, Leah Bevis, Vijay Chowdhari and Chris O'Connell, radios are the most accessible and utilized news source in Uganda, creating a sense of community within the country. The group plans to facilitate interviews and develop questions to reveal the personal narratives of children in Uganda who have dealt with conflict and prejudice.

The sophomores propose to give children five to ten minute segments to capture the essence of the narratives. This will empower individuals, create national awareness and aid ongoing international peace talks. The group plans to create an audio archive that will serve as an oral history and professionally edit at least 75 stories to air in the United States and Uganda, including 50 by September 15.

Hamza Arshed Usmani '10 and Shujaat Ali Khan '10 developed their project, "Enlightening Pakistan," in collaboration with Seeds of Peace, an international organization that was created by an alumnus from the College.

Usmani and Khan's plans include a middle- and high-school textbook revision by college students and professors to eliminate both historical and religious biases that help to propagate negative stereotypes, creating better educational tools. They will also use the funding to create a youth magazine that will include content from students about empowering youth and address their views on local and international politics, westernization and society in general. They plan to hold conferences that will serve as inter-religious dialogues, and give presentations and tolerance workshops to Pakistani students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds dealing with international issues.

"I knew that I wanted to do something with Pakistan because I'm from Pakistan," said Usmani. He stressed the multiple components involved in his initiative, in order to improve the education and knowledge of Pakistani youth, as well as to address the dispute between Pakistan and India.

"It's about time that the roots of intolerance are addressed so that people can better understand problems of terrorism and a solution can be implemented on a larger scale," said Usmani.

After studying at the College, Usmani said, "I was made to think about these things and I wanted to do something myself to remove the source of religious intolerance embedded from the beginning."

The two projects to be sponsored by the College include Caitrin Abshere's '07 "No-Collateral Damage: Micro-credit, Environmental Degradation and the Threat to Peace," and "Louisiana Art and Peace Project (LAPP)" submitted by Jennifer Leigh Williams '08, Conetrise Holt '10 and Justin Spurley '10.

Abshere's project explores whether micro-credit loans to impoverished agricultural communities in Thailand have negative impacts on peaceful communities and the environment. Abshere's plans for this summer include living in a Thai village, conducting interviews with creditors from a Thai nongovernmental organization and testing environmental quality indicators in collaboration with a United States-based environmental consulting firm.

Abshere plans to help the Thai micro-finance companies to adopt credit strategies that will preserve the integrity of natural resources.

"I hope my work will sensitize micro-credit lenders to the implications of the activities they are financing," wrote Abshere in an e-mail.

Abshere's project proposal came out of an Environmental Economics class.

"I was excited by the chance to do something good on my own terms, using my own passions and abilities," wrote Abshere.

Spurley said that his group's project seeks to provide an atmosphere where New Orleans youth can think critically about themselves and understand their communities through mentoring and group discussion. According to Spurley, youth will be empowered to communicate their own desires for the future of the city of New Orleans, and taught that their ideas are important.

Spurley became involved in the project after reading the proposal designed by Williams and Holt. According to Spurley the proposal made him consider the pain, struggle and hardships the people of New Orleans faced during and after the flood. Spurley was excited to get involved in the project to help others in the same way he would hope others would help his family in crisis.

"This is important to me because of the tremendous impact and positive influence that it will have on New Orleans youth," wrote Spurley in an e-mail.