Wheaton students win grants to promote world peace

Three Wheaton students have won two $10,000 grants to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer through the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative.

Derron J.R. Wallace '07 received an award from the Davis Projects for Peace program to fund a project that will benefit school children in Jamaica and Tanzania; Caitlin O'Connor '08 and Ashley Mott '08 will focus strengthening an after-school program in three Tanzanian villages.

The Davis Projects for Peace awards are made possible by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who has funded the $1 million initiative in celebration of her 100th birthday. ''I want to use my 100th birthday to help young people launch some immediate initiatives that could bring new thinking of the prospects for peace in the world,'' said Davis.

Mott and O'Connor propose building a classroom to expand the activities of an established after-school program in Tengeru, Patandi, and Sing≠isi villages, settlements on the periphery of one of Tanzania's most developed urban centers, Arusha. They also intend to provide English learning materials and arts materials to build the curriculum, create a pen-pal program in association with the Nantucket Boys and Girls Club, and develop a postcard and greeting card program with students to ensure economic sustainability. They have already received letters of support from the Nantucket Boys and Girls Club and the Wheaton College Bookstore.

''Given the intense globalization process which is presently underway, I see the importance in developing positive connections between cultures, in order to realize the similarities and better understand the differences which exist between us all,'' said Mott, whose project partner visited Tanzania in the summer of 2005. ''I am so excited to begin this venture, and begin fostering relationships to ensure the sustainability of the school.''

Wallace plans to use his grant to to establish small school libraries and to provide school uniforms in volatile school communities in Tivoli, Jamaica and Unga Limited, Tanzania, as a way to counteract the poverty-related influences that lead to crime and violence. He will work with Jamaica's National Youth Service, National Social Development Commission, and Chichibud Limited, along with Tanzania's McMoody's and LOHADA. The Wheaton senior, who is the current president of the Student Government Association, is also a Watson Fellow will follow up his project with a year of travel and study abroad in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.

The Davis Projects for Peace contest was open to students at the 76 American colleges and universities participating in the Davis United World College Scholars Program. Students were invited to design grassroots projects and they were to be judged on the basis of those that were most promising and feasible. The objective of the contest is to encourage and support today's motivated young women and men to create and try out their own ideas for building peace in the 21st century. An internationalist and philanthropist, Davis is the mother of Wheaton Trustee Diana Davis Spencer '60.

A complete list of other Davis Projects for Peace winners can be found at http://www.kwd100projectsforpeace.org/summer2007.html.