Davis Project for Peace recipients Spencer Collet ’13 and James LePage ’13. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

Initiatives to foster Israeli-Palestinian dialogue through the Web and nurture collaborative conversations in a recently liberalized Myanmar have garnered Davis Projects for Peace awards for three Bates students.

The $10,000 awards support international projects that college students undertake to “bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world,” in the words of philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis. Learn more.

Two seniors, Spencer Collet of Leawood, Kan., and James LePage of Cumberland, Maine, received the award for “Tweets for Peace,” their project using the Internet to enhance communication between Israeli and Palestinian youth. The pair will work with former participants in the Seeds of Peace conflict resolution program that takes place every summer in Otisfield, Maine.

2013 Davis Project for Peace recipient Aung Myint ’14. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

Aung Myint, a junior from Yangon, Myanmar, received his award for “Minorities, Monasteries, and Conversations,” a reading-discussion program to help build the capacity for critical judgment and constructive dialogue among ethnic minorities in his native country. Using Burmese translations of English texts from the Maryland-based Touchstones Discussion Project, Myint will coordinate gatherings in Buddhist monasteries in Yangon.

Learn more about the Bates students’ Projects for Peace:

• Tweets for Peace
• Minorities, Monasteries, and Conversations

First-year students Natacha Danon, left, and Olivia Krishnaswami are sharing a Davis Projects for Peace grant for a project in India. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Two first-year students from the Seattle area have received a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant to stimulate economic development and support a rural education initiative in a community in India.

The project devised by Olivia Krishnaswami and Natacha Danon will support humanitarian efforts in the district of Kanchipuram, in the state of Tamil Nadu, by marketing to U.S. customers silk scarves made by local women.

The initiative is one of 100 initiatives supported this year by the Projects for Peace program. At age 104, founder and philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis funds the program to encourage college students to undertake innovative, meaningful projects that promote peace in the world.

Krishnaswami and Danon are partnering with the Rural Institute for Developing Education, which supports marginalized people in nearly 200 rural villages in Kanchipuram. RIDE provides “bridge schools” to help move children from labor into education, self-help groups for women and training for entrepreneurial and vocational success, and it also monitors compliance with child labor regulations.

“The people in RIDE have this vision of the community as something stronger than what it is now and they are working to get there,” says Krishnaswami.

How will her and Danon’s project advance the cause of peace? In the most basic sense, peace is the absence of violence, explains Krishnaswami.

“But there’s this greater idea of peace meaning that people in a society are getting what they need — food, water, education. And with this broader sense of peace comes stability, and less likelihood that a community will fall prey to violence.”

Kanchipuram is known for its specialty silk saris, the women’s garments that consist of a single strip of cloth that is wrapped and draped around the body. Many women manufacture the saris at home.

But the sari industry is linked with perpetuating disproportionate levels of poverty for women and children, especially for those from traditionally lower castes. Because gender bias discourages women from working outside the home, factories often look to children as a labor force, keeping them from getting an education and locking them into a future of poorly paying work.

“Exclusion of women from the workforce has led to the rise of child labor as an alternative to boosting family income,” the Bates students explain in their Projects for Peace proposal. “With children working rather than attending school, human capital levels stagnate.

“The development of human capital is crucial for a community to uplift itself out of poverty and social inequality.”

The Projects for Peace grant will enable Krishnaswami and Danon to employ RIDE self-help groups to create scarves in the styles of the saris that they already produce. They will market the scarves in the United States, dividing proceeds equally among business expenses (including payment to the scarf makers), product and market development, and funds for RIDE programs.

To distribute the scarves, Krishnaswami and Danon will recruit sales representatives on college and high school campuses, hold benefit concerts and branch out to the retail sector through local businesses in Seattle and Maine — including the restaurant Mother India in Lewiston.

They estimate the project will initially employ more than 100 women and generate $3,300 for RIDE. The short-term goal is to sell 500 scarves by the end of summer 2012, but the project is designed to become sustainable over time.

Overall the project will create employment opportunities for women, utilize preexisting skills in an environmentally conscious way and support the programs of RIDE through funds and awareness.

The project originated with Krishnaswami, who implemented a program to sell canvas bags for RIDE in high school. “I’ve had this dream for a long time. I got so passionate about the idea of it.

“I had the idea that maybe it could grow, but I didn’t know how to do that. So getting this grant has really kick-started it for me.”

Krishnaswami is a double major in politics and women and gender studies. Danon expects to major in politics or anthropology.

Chomba Kaluba ’10 gives the presentation Literacy and Microfinance for Sustainable Development and Peace, explaining his work with a Zambian nonprofit organization that he founded and directs, in a Homecoming Weekend presentation at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Kaluba, of Mpika, Zambia, launched the Kachlite Foundation to empower communities to help themselves through sustainable microfinance projects involving livestock and agriculture. The foundation also promotes literacy as a tool to wipe out hardship and bring sustainable development and peace.

Growing up in Zambia, he was inspired by the work of Peace Corps volunteers from Maine. As a Bates student, he seized opportunities to make a difference in both Maine and struggling communities abroad.

At Bates, Kaluba twice received national Davis Projects for Peace awards. In 2008, he shared an award with other students to help establish a community garden in Mwanza, Tanzania, to fight the food-for-sex trade. A 2010 award enabled him to advance a microfinancing initiative and a literacy initiative for elderly widows in rural Zambia during the summer.

In his talk at Bates, Kaluba will discuss his experiences in Zambia and his plans for the foundation. Students interested in volunteering with the Kachlite Foundation can arrange a meeting with him at this chomba@kachlitefoundation.org.

Kaluba today is pursuing a master’s degree in conflict and development at the School for International Training, and hopes to make his career in international and human rights law.

Two Bates College students have received 2010 Davis Projects for Peace awards to fund development initiatives in Zambia and Afghanistan.

Mustafa Basij-Rasikh, a sophomore from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Chomba Kaluba, senior from Mpika, Zambia, each received a $7,250 grant. The money will support Basij-Rasikh’s project for empowering people disabled by land mines in Afghanistan, and Kaluba’s literary and microfinance programs for development in rural Zambia.
The projects reflect the importance of economic opportunity to a stable society. As Kaluba wrote in his Projects for Peace proposal, “The dissatisfaction of one sector of a society with the unequal access to opportunity and prosperity is always cause for unrest and violence.”

Their projects are among more than 100 initiatives supported by the Projects for Peace program. At the age of 103, founder and philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis funds the program to encourage college students to undertake innovative, meaningful projects that promote peace in the world.

Beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979, unceasing conflict has made Afghanistan one of the world’s most heavily mined countries. An average of 40 Afghans are killed or maimed by mine explosions each month. Basij-Rasikh, who has witnessed firsthand the devastation wrought by mines, designed a project to help reintegrate mine victims into society.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He will supply tricycles and carts to mine victims, train these individuals to repair and use them, and provide small grants to begin a business. The tricycles will promote independence by affording mobility, and the carts will serve as stands for selling goods such as vegetables, fruit or clothing.

Basij-Rasikh will undertake the work in the provinces of Kabul, Herat, Parwan, Bulkh and Nangarhar. These provinces are home to many of Afghanistan’s disabled people and have many paved roads, which provide easier transportation and a better market for the disabled to sell their goods.

The Davis grant will allow Basij-Rasikh to purchase parts for tricycles and carts, hire assistants and give startup financing for mine victims. As he puts it, “With a little money and a tricycle, a disabled person can start an independent and prosperous life.”

Kaluba also feels a strong personal connection to his project. He seeks to promote peace in rural communities in Zambia through empowerment programs. There are two parts to his project: a microfinancing initiative using livestock and a literacy initiative.

The microfinance element focuses on goats as an income source. Goat meat is popular in Zambia and goats are a good source of income and protein. Goats will be provided to impoverished households and volunteers will teach recipients how to make best use of them. Participants will be required to give the first offspring of their goats to another family in need, form registered associations and establish banking systems.

With formal education out of reach for many Zambians, the second part focuses on improving literacy through the Kachlite Foundation, which Kaluba founded and directs. Volunteers will facilitate study circles with members of the community. Materials for this project will be donated by the Zambian Ministry of Education in Mpika, along with book donations from Maine. The rest of the supplies will be funded by the Davis grant.

This is not Kaluba’s first initiative in these fields. In 2008 he shared a Projects for Peace grant with two other Bates students to create a community garden in Tanzania that offers street children a survival alternative to a pervasive sex-for-food trade. In 2009 Kaluba received a Bates College Philips Fellowship grant supporting a project in Guatemala that promoted the making of salable art to fight poverty.

Bates students have won a Project for Peace award every year since the program’s inception, in 2007. Learn more.

Two Bates seniors have received a 2009 Davis Projects for Peace award for their plan to create an economic stimulus project in an African village.

Sam Nagourney of New York and Jacob Nudel of Woodbridge, Conn., will use the $10,000 grant to create an educational animal husbandry program and microcredit operation in Shimbwe, a village in the Mount Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. [More...]

A plan by Bates College students to help support a home for street children in Rwanda won a $10,000 award from the 100 Projects for Peace program sponsored by noted philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis.

Bates was one of 76 colleges and universities across the nation whose students submitted proposals to 100 Projects for Peace. The program was established with a $1 million donation from Davis, the mother of Shelby Davis, whose United World College Scholars Program spends more than $20 million annually bringing international students to American campuses, including Bates.

The Projects for Peace award will enable a group called Bates Students for Peace in Rwanda to assist a children’s home in a region hit especially hard by the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in that African nation.

The 10 Bates students in the group came together through “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda,” a course taught by Assistant Professor of French Alexandre Dauge-Roth. Dauge-Roth had his students strike up correspondences with Rwandans as a way of learning about the genocide on a personal level.

“People in the class were very interested to know even more,” says Mireille Ikirezi, a Bates senior and genocide survivor from Kigali, Rwanda. “Actually learning about what happened in Rwanda 13 years ago, they decided, ‘Well, maybe we should do something about it, because we didn’t know at that time.’ ”

The award “was our chance to actually do something,” adds Catherine Zimmermann, a senior from Milton, Mass.

The group will focus on Gitagata Rehabilitation Center, a state facility for street children in Bugasera. Five members will spend several weeks at the facility this summer, and the members who are not graduating seniors will launch a series of activities at Bates next autumn to raise money for and awareness about Gitagata.

“As a Rwandese, I am humbly delighted to have this chance to give back to my community, since helping the needy, especially children, is something I want to do with the rest of my life,” says Ikirezi. “These children didn’t do anything to deserve such pain and such a destiny, and I absolutely believe it is our responsibility — people from all over the world — to come together to help.”

Along with Ikirezi and Zimmermann, students visiting Rwanda in June and July are Katharine Harmsworth-Morrissey, a junior from Brookline, Mass.; Emily Maistrellis, a junior from Annapolis, Md.; and Brooke Miller, a senior from Arlington, Va.

The other members of Bates Students for Peace in Rwanda are Kathryn Conkling, a sophomore from East Chatham, N.Y.; Anne Connell, a first-year student from Newburyport, Mass.; Dylan Morris, a senior from Bloomington, Minn.; Alicia Oas, a sophomore from Durham, N.C.; and Julia Resnick, a junior from Highland Park, Ill.

A key goal of the Bates visit is to establish a relationship with administrators and children at Gitagata. “Part of it will be seeing the realities of what we have read about and learned about in class,” Miller explains. “I think that’s an amazing part.”

The Bates group will also work with the children to produce craft items that can be sold at Bates to raise money for the facility, which can’t afford many basic needs. In addition, Ikirezi explains, the Bates students will perform a “photovoice” project at the facility, giving the children cameras as a means of self-expression.

“We’re going to ask them what the pictures mean. They’re going to tell their own story through the pictures,” says Ikirezi. Prints of the images may be exhibited at Bates and sold to raise money for Gitagata. “I think they’re going to say more than we can say.”

A Swiss native who started teaching at Bates in 2005, Dauge-Roth for four years has researched the personal, literary and film narratives created about Rwanda in the years since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In March, he convened an international conference at Bates and panels at other schools to examine the origins of the genocide and Rwanda’s subsequent efforts to rebuild its economic, social and political structures.

If the media spotlight has moved on from Rwanda to crises in Darfur and elsewhere, that diminishes neither the exigent needs that exist in Rwanda nor the lessons it holds for other countries. “The Darfur situation and the Rwandan one aren’t really that different,” says Ikirezi. “By learning from our mistakes in Rwanda, maybe we can try to do something to help in Darfur.”

100 Projects for Peace was made possible by an accomplished internationalist and philanthropist who is in her 100th year. Davis chose to celebrate her centennial birthday by committing $1 million for the peace program.

Undergraduates at the 76 American colleges and universities in the Davis United World College Scholars Program, based at Middlebury College, were invited to submit proposals for grassroots projects to be implemented this summer, with the 100 projects judged to be the most promising and practical to be funded at $10,000 each. For more about the program, visit the home page.