Students travel the world to work for peace

	Peter Brock '09		Meghan Morris '09		Spencer Xiangjian- dangzhi '11

What moves students to travel to the ends of the earth? Sometimes it's the urge to do good works. This summer, with funding from the Davis Projects for Peace program, three Skidmore students will travel to rural villages in Nepal and Tibet to tackle the grassroots projects they designed in the hope of making the world a better place. Peter Brock and Meghan Morris, both class of 2009, will spearhead the building of a meeting house for local women's groups in Nepal, while Spencer Xiangjiandangzhi '11 will oversee the repair and expansion of a primary school in Tibet.

Now in its second year, the Davis Projects for Peace program annually awards $10,000 grants to 100 projects, each designed by students from colleges and universities participating in the Davis United World College Scholar Program. The peace project was launched in 2007 by philanthropist and internationalist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who said, "I wanted 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."

For instance, Brock's and Morris's project is the building of a two-story community meeting house, in the village of Taklung, for women of the Dalit caste?the most disadvantaged members of Nepalese society. The students will work closely with the Association of Dalit Women's Advancement in Nepal (ADWAN), a small human-rights organization founded in 1996 by Bishnu Pariyar, herself a Dalit woman.

The meeting house will be constructed of stones, timber, corrugated metal, and concrete at a cost of $4,400. Morris's and Brock's $10,000 budget also includes such items as $3,200 for blackboards, books, educational materials, and "two teachers for three years at $500 per year." Taklung residents will provide the labor, with ADWAN staff supervising construction. Once complete, the new space will house meetings and community workshops for three active Dalit womens' groups and will also provide an educational childcare program.

For Morris, a philosophy major and art minor, the project started when ADWAN founder Bishnu Pariyar spoke at Skidmore last fall, describing her group's work to end domestic violence and caste and gender discrimination by means of education and income-generating work. "I was inspired by what Bishnu had to say, and Projects for Peace seemed to be a great avenue to help out with her efforts." Adds Brock, a self-determined major in political and economic development "It's good to see students get excited about coming up with a creative proposal to contribute to peace-building in this world."

For Xiangjiandangzhi, the summer's work will be to expand and repair a primary school in the impoverished agricultural village of Aujia, in China's Qinghai Province. Xiangjiandangzhi, better known around campus as Spencer, hails from what he describes as a remote and impoverished village in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. "As one of few educated people in my community, I realized that I could do something helpful to improve my community," he explains. He met with villagers to discuss the most essential local needs, collected information, and wrote a proposal to improve the village's school, which leaks during summer rains and is cold in the winter. Its 60 students (grades one to three) study in damp classrooms with cracked walls, no blackboards, no electricity or desks or stools, sitting on piles of broken bricks salvaged from a nearby factory.

This summer, with Spencer overseeing construction contracts and financial accounts, the villagers will repair the existing ceilings, floors, and blackboards and also build three new classrooms to accommodate students grade six, in a learning space enhanced with three solar electricity-generating panels, 60 sets of desks and chairs, and one basketball hoop. "This project, although small in size, makes efforts to ensure the basic rights of children to read and write," says Spencer, who plans to major in anthropology and minor in education. "Although I know I cannot change a society completely, I believe that everything that is big in significance is built on a beginning that is tiny and unnoticeable."

For more information about the Davis Projects for Peace program, visit the Davis Projects Web site.