By Iain Guest | Project leader
This report is going to friends who have donated to our program, Fellows for Peace, through GlobalGiving. You have contributed $83,020 since we launched the appeal in 2015 and this has allowed us to recruit 87 students to volunteer in 20 countries, including the US. Thank you!
Our mission is to help marginalized communities tell their stories, strengthen their organizations and take action for social change. Peace Fellows play a key role, and this year we recruited six graduates from US universities and one undergraduate at the University of York in the UK. This report looks back over their summer and how they have contributed to our program.
Working with new partners – conflict in Burma
We select Fellows for their confidence, curiosity and ability to make friends, all of which helps us to build new partnerships.
Earlier this year we received a partnership request from the Pa’O Youth Organization (PYO), which works in Thailand and Burma for young people and refugees from the war in Burma. We turned to Madeleine, a student of conflict resolution at Georgetown University, to build the partnership and explain the conflict.
Madeleine responded with several insightful blogs about a vulnerable community that has received very little coverage - transgender people who have been vilified by the Burmese Junta and are at severe risk from conscription. In one blog Madeleine described meeting remotely with Hom, 23, who presents as a man and is in hiding in Burma with his wife. Hom expressed fear of being picked up at any time. He was also terrified that his wife might be conscripted.
Madeleine’s excellent blogs were opened by 2,926 readers. She also launched an appeal for PYO on GlobalGiving, gave trainings in conflict resolution to PYO members, helped PYO produce a monthly newsletter of human rights violations, and advised PYO about joining the Alliance for Peacebuilding in Washington. By the time Madeleine left Thailand we had a much better feel for PYO and how we might help in the months to come.
Launching start-ups – malaria in India and climate resiliency in Kenya
Fellows have contributed to many innovative start-ups through the years. This summer we asked Adin, a student of architecture and planning at Harvard University, to support one of our more unusial initiatives - a start-up in India that makes mosquito repellent from Neem trees.
This is part of a campaign by Jeevan Rekha Parishad (JRP), our partner in Odisha State, to reverse a frightening surge in malaria in tribal villages. JRP succeeded in bringing cases in ten villages down to zero in 2023 - an amazing achievement - and decided to include Neem trees in the plan for 2024. Neem trees grow abundantly in the villages and villagers use smoke from the leaves to ward off mosquitoes. But they had not thought of using the Need seeds that litter the forest floor.
JRP felt this was a missed opportunity and we offered to fund a start-up to turn the seeds into oil that would repel mosquitoes. We then looked for a Fellow to help. This would not be an easy fellowship. Odisha was in the middle of a brutal heat wave and the monsoon was just around the corner. But Adin was up to the challenge, as he showed in this early blog.
Adin quickly made friends with Surajita, the hard-working JRP field officer whose job was to mobilize women in the villages. Fifty tribal women signed up and collected over a ton of seeds, which were then processed into oil by a press installed by the project. The women received over 42,000 rupees ($500) for their haul and the project produced 128 bottles of oil which they branded as Neemola. Most of the new oil was distributed to villagers to test. The remaining bottles would be sold in the local market.
This start-up represents a significant investment for us and Adin recorded every stage through strong photos and blogs. Whether or not Neemola oil will help bring down rates of malaria remains to be seen, of course. But by the time he left, Adin concluded that the experiment had shown remarkable progress and should definitely be integrated into the larger malaria eradication program.
Adin made many other contributions during his fellowship that included a fundraising proposal, photos, video footage, a website, and social media posts. As might be expected of a top student, he also took delight in exploring the rich culture of Odisha and tribal customs. He attended the Ratha Yatra (also known as the Chariot Festival), one of the grandest Hindu celebrations in India, and registered his awe in a final blog.
Olivia, a student at the Fletcher School, also helped to launch a start-up to build climate resiliency while volunteering at Children Peace Initiative Kenya (CPIK). Building on the great work of Julia, a 2022 Fellow, CPIK organized a meeting for herders from the Ilchamus and Pokot tribes to discuss the disastrous impact of climate on their cows. Olivia described the discussion in several effective blogs. CPIK hopes to hold a second camp this month and design a long-term program next year.
Fundraising for partners
We hope that Fellows will help their hosts to raise modest funds and this year’s team did well! Five Fellows launched appeals on GlobalGiving which pulled in $5,340. All five Fellows donated to their own appeals.
Measured by the amount raised, the most successful appeal raised $1,817 for ten brave women who were held captive for many years by rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The women have formed an association, Women in Action for Women (WAW), and told their stories through embroidery. In the process they have become excellent stitchers and dream of starting a tailoring business. Our Fellow Julia (George Washington University) helped them to develop a plan and post this appeal on GlobalGiving. Several American quilters were happy to donate. They know talent when they see it!
Looking back over the year the prize for fundraising by Fellows should probably go to our two high school Fellows in the US, Ruby in Nashville and Sahasra in Atlanta, who both led soap-making teams from their schools and raised money for the education of girls in Zimbabwe. We described their heroics in this recent report. Ruby and Sahasra remind us that teenagers as well as graduate students can be effective Peace Fellows. All it takes is a commitment to social justice, an ability to inspire others and plenty of imagination!
And Fellows do not stop contributing when their fellowsips end. Dawa, who volunteered with our Zimbabwe partner in 2022, still supports the education of the girls in Harare in her current job at USAID.
Supporting programs for social change
Under our model, projects that begin as start-ups move through the project pipeline, gathering momentum, until they start to change behavior in society at large. This can take several years.
One of our most successful programs installs WASH (water, hygiene and sanitation) in primary schools in Gulu, Northern Uganda. The idea came from Rebecca, a 2011 Peace Fellow. No fewer than ten talented Fellows have helped to develop the program in the years since.
This year’s Fellow, Julia, helped GPDU install toilets, handwashing and a changing room for 350 girl students at the Kulu Opal school. Kulu Opal is the seventh school to have benefitted from the WASH program and GDPU's model has the enthusiastic support of the district government, an essential partner in achieving social change. Julia also took time off from WASH to coach a local girls’ soccer team. In one hilarious blog she described the wide-eyed amazement of her team as she explained the passion for women’s soccer in the US. The blog was opened by 1,570 readers.
After several years of partnership, the WASH program is now emerging at the end of our project pipeline, which is how it should be. But GDPU will continue to host smart students like Julia who can promote the program in the North while building their own resumes.
Social media
We have struggled to improve our use of social media and turned this summer to Maddy, a student at York University in the UK for help. Maddy created this fresh new Facebook page for our partners. She also taught herself TikTok and began producing sparkling posts about the programs reviewed in this report.
Maddy’s most popular post to date shows Tatenda, 18, one of the young soap-makers in Zimbabwe, leading a welcome dance for our team when we visited last summer. Tatenda’s moves have been admired by 1,543 visitors. We hope you will check out Maddy's TikTok masterpieces here!
Stitching and embroidery
As you may know from previous reports, we invite new partners to tell their stories through stitching. If they get the bug – and many do – we help them to find an outlet, and hopefully a market, for their embroidery.
I explained earlier how Julia helped Women in Action for Women to raise funds for a tailoring business in Uganda. During Julia’s fellowship, the WAW artists also produced 106 embroidered butterfly blocks which Julia brought back to the US. The blocks are currently being turned into art quilts by quilters in the US, Canada and Kenya. Once completed they will be exhibited at the Textile Museum in Washington, profiled in a catalogue, and sold through an auction. All profits will go to the new WAW tailoring start-up.
This will be our third Sister Artists quilt challenge since 2000. Like the other initiatives described in this report, it would not have been possible without help from a Peace Fellow.
The impact on Fellows
In addition to building programs and strengthening partnerships, we hope that peace fellowships will give students unique exposure to development work at the community level, boost their confidence, enhance their academic studies and help their future careers.
Adin offered a generous assessment of his fellowship in India: “Despite a few challenges, my experience this summer was profoundly rewarding and I’m grateful to The Advocacy Project for this life-changing opportunity. As I return to my studies this fall, I have a deeper understanding of the profound power of local initiatives to effect long-lasting change. My experience will undoubtedly shape my future trajectory in planning and development in international contexts.”
You can read more Fellow testimonies here.
The challenge of security
In spite of the successes, this summer's Peace Fellows also faced unexpected challenges.
We did not expect riots to break out in downtown Nairobi, one of Africa's most popular tourist destinations, but that is exactly when happened in June when Kenyans came out in their thousands to protest an unpopular new tax law. Weeks of street violence made it impossible for our Kenyan partner, Stella, to visit her team of composters who are composting food waste and growing vegetables in kitchen gardens.
We had hoped that The Raven, a student at George Washington University, would help Stella to review her program but the riots made this impossible. With many regrets all round, The Raven cut her fellowship short and returned home.
Looking to the future
This is the time of year when we draw conclusions and plan for the upcoming year.
Julia in Uganda, Adin in India and Madeleine in Thailand showed that Peace Fellows can play an essential role in developing start-ups and supporting longer-term programs for social change. But the riots in Nairobi were also a reminder that we can never be too careful when it comes to to security. Nor should we underestimate the impact of loneliness. One solution might be to deploy a pair of Fellows to difficult duty stations.
We also need to revisit training. Prior to the pandemic we organized a week of mandatory training for all Fellows in Washington to build team spirit and provide specialized instruction in security, cultural sensitivity, blogging, photography and social media. This training was put on hold during the pandemic but clearly should be reinstated. Ideally, the training can also take place at a university that is providing us with new Fellows. This would strengthen the academic content of fellowships and give our university partners more say in how their students are deployed.
Whatever the case, another busy year lies ahead!
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None of this would be possible without your help and we hope you will again donate to this appeal on Giving Tuesday (December 3). GlobalGiving will offer matching funds.
In gratitude
Iain and the AP team
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By Iain Guest | Project Coordinator
By Iain Guest | Project Coordinator
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