HOW WOULD YOU USE $10,000 TO BUILD PEACE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD?

Application Entry Deadline: Friday, November 17, 2023

Send us your two-page project proposal and one page budget to [email protected].

The projects judged to be the most promising will be funded at $10,000 each.

PROJECTS FOR PEACE 2018: PLAYGROUNDS FOR PEACE

“Play leads to important developmental skills that, in turn, encourage peace. Playgrounds for Peace will firstly contribute to peace by giving children a space for self-directed play. This space, in turn, fosters an attitude for exploration both academically and otherwise. The playgrounds built also act as a blueprint for future playgrounds in the region. Thus, the project, in the long-term, will lead to more playgrounds, more play, and so encourage more peace.”

— Kieran Dunn, Colby College ’20

Kieran Dunn ‘20 led this project with the goal of bringing peace to Zimbabwe communities through play. By building playgrounds and organizing a sports tournament among neighboring communities, he brought a spirit of recreation and well-being to the area. Dunn’s efforts align well with the Davis Projects for Peace mission of creating and maintaining a more peaceful environment with innovative techniques.

This was a Project for Peace.

PROJECTS FOR PEACE 2016: PEACE THROUGH WATER

This is Benard’s second Project for Peace award and it focused on making water readily available to schools and to the main health center in his village in Kenya. The project successfully created a self-sustaining water pump and designed plans for a larger water tank. An immediate impact is that students spend more time in school learning since they no longer need to spend time fetching water in the morning and at the end of the day. Another major benefit is that the local health center has water near its facility for the first time which lowers operating costs and enables better health care. Benard believes that these tangible benefits will improve the economic condition of the community.

Benard reflected that “This project has changed the way I think about the world…It has taught me that one really does not need to do big things to have impact on people’s lives…the impact on my village has had an amazing ripple effect throughout the community.”

This was a Project for Peace.

PROJECTS FOR PEACE 2015: BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN CHILE

Due to the effects of climate change, Central Chile’s alpine ecosystems have become severely threatened in recent years. These threatened ecosystem evolved in specific climatic conditions that gave them unique patterns of biodiversity, harboring many endemic species essential for the livelihoods of rural communities. This project was designed to promote peace in the Aconcagua valley by empowering the children of a rural community to implement a conservation effort within the context of conflict brought on by escalating drought, water scarcity, and desertification.

This was a Project for Peace.

PROJECTS FOR PEACE 2011: EMBROIDERY EMPOWERS AFGHAN WOMEN

In Kabul, Afghanistan, Colby College senior Sulaiman Nasseri lived under the Taliban regime and saw the nightmarish ways it treated women. “I wanted to do something for the women of Afghanistan — especially for my mom,” he said. “I am here because of her.” Talking with his family, he hatched an idea: his project would train women from a poor neighborhood to do professional embroidery, and equip them with simple tools.

Sulaiman Nasseri had read a study that ranked his home country of Afghanistan as the worst place in the world for maternal well-being. This struck a chord, and he imagined a Project for Peace that would help destitute mothers in Kabul earn enough money to feed their families and send their children to school. His idea was to accomplish this through the teaching of the traditional art of Afghan embroidery, and then to bring the hand-embroidered goods to market in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Over the course of the summer, Sulaiman conducted three phases of his project. He first hired experienced embroiderers as trainers. Next, he worked with local organizations to find the most needy and highly motivated women to learn the embroidery techniques. Finally, after some weeks of training, participants took materials to their homes where they made up goods to be sold. The embroiderers are paid for their work, and roughly ten percent of the profits go back into the program in order to expand and train more participants. The beautiful finished goods are marketed and sold in Afghanistan and through Etsy, an online marketplace.

From the outset, Sulaiman’s goal was not only to provide the women with the resources to help themselves, but to give them the means to get their children off the streets and into school. So far, more than twenty children have entered school, keeping them out of the child-labor market and making them less accessible targets for ever-present terrorist groups.

The eighteen women who now earn income from embroidery have an average of four children each. The project has enabled many of their children to attend school “who would otherwise,” Sulaiman said, “have worked on the dangerous streets of Kabul as child laborers to find livelihood for their families.” The three trainers recruited for the project have reported that its work continues. The women are producing embroidered clothes, popular among Afghans, and a city shop is selling them. “Yes, this is a small project,” Sulaiman summed up. “But what I’m doing here is making a real difference.”

This was a Project for Peace.

PROJECTS FOR PEACE AWARD RECIPIENTS

The Davis Projects for Peace were originally made possible by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, an accomplished internationalist and philanthropist. Upon the occasion of her 100th birthday in February of 2007, Mrs. Davis, mother of Shelby M.C. Davis who funds the Davis UWC Scholars Program, chose to celebrate her milestone by committing $1 million for one hundred Projects for Peace. “I want to use my 100th birthday to help young people launch some immediate initiatives – things that they can do during the summer of 2007 – that will bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world,” said Mrs. Davis in 2007. Despite Mrs. Davis’ death in 2013, the program is being sustained through the United World College Scholars Program.

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