Thanks to the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative, Ann Kwan ’09 and Kelly Maby ’09 have each won $10,000 grants to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer. Kwan will establish a handicrafts shop for a Cambodian non-profit, while Maby will take urban high school students on a tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders.

March 21, 2008

One student plans on establishing a handicrafts shop for a Cambodian non-profit; the other will take urban high school students on a week-long tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders.

Thanks to the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative, Ann Kwan '09 and Kelly Maby '09 have each won $10,000 grants to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer.

Their awards mark the second consecutive year that Wheaton students have won grants from the Davis Projects for Peace program. The initiative is made possible by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who started the program in celebration of her 100th birthday. Because of the program's success, Mrs. Davis continued it for the summer of 2008.

Kwan plans to use her grant to continue her work with Yodifee, a Cambodian non-profit that provides shelter, food and education to people with diabilities. This summer, she will help the organization establish a store out of which the young women and men served by Yodifee will be able to sell their handicrafts, from bags and wallets to woodcarvings. If successful, the shop would help to make the non-profit more self-sufficient and less reliant on foreign aid.

"Opening a store in a more populous tourist area will increase visibility for the handicrafts and potentially increase revenue," Kwan wrote in her proposal, which would move Yodifee's handicraft sales from the small village of Takhmao to the busy streets of Phnom Pen. "Through my experience as a tourist as well as a grassroots NGO worker, I can see that a market exists for these unique handicrafts."

A United World Scholar student at Wheaton, Kwan lives in Singapore and has worked with Yodifee in the past, most recently as the recipient of the college's Davis International Fellowships, which provide the support for research and study abroad. She is pursuing a double major in economics and international relations, and she is particularly interested in the role of education in a nation's development. Kwan hopes to earn a graduate degree in sociology and work for an international development agency such as UNICEF or UNESCO."

The concept of peace is not just the absence of conflict or abuse from external sources, but also the absence of self-inflicted abuse," Kwan wrote in her proposal. "Peace is a state in which someone can acknowledge that she is worthy of the same privileges as everyone else and has the personal pride, dignity and drive to work toward a better future."

Maby, who lives in Woodhaven (Queens), N.Y., will return to Brooklyn this summer and apply her grant to helping high school students receive some of the educational opportunities that she has enjoyed. Her plan: offer scholarships to five students for a tour of the South, visiting landmarks in the Civil Rights struggle and meeting and learning from Civil Rights leaders. The tours, which are organized by the American Civil Rights Education Services in Bedford Stuyvesant, aim to show low-income and minority students that "the injustices they see and experience do not have to be tolerated or accepted as a part of life.

"I know that ACRES can make a difference in the lives of inner city kids because of what it did for me when I was in high school," Maby wrote in her proposal. "It motivated me to study harder when ACRES offered me a travel-study scholarship to meet with the movement leaders who made sure that I benefit from an equal education today... It made me strive toward a college education ... [and] win a scholarship to study in South Africa my senior year, where I visited schools in Soweto with few resources and little funding."

Maby is pursuing a double major in Hispanic studies and sociology and a minor in urban studies. She is currently studying in Argentina where she has previously served as a volunteer at an orphanage through the support of grants from the Wheaton Foundation in 2006 and a college-funded adjunct to the 100 Projects for Peace initiative in 2007."

My project last year successfully integrated both my majors and I really enjoyed being able to work with children and adults on developing a sense of self and a sense of place in society," Maby said. "After graduation, I hope to get accepted to the Peace Corps and then go to medical school to apply my major concentrations a step further."