Help Our Peace Fellows to Serve and Learn!

We last reported back to you in June as we were wrapping up training for this year's Fellows at Georgetown University. We predicted great things for them all and we were not disappointed, as you will see. But first a bit of background

We launched Fellows for Peace in 2003 to offer graduates an opportunity to work on the frontlines of human rights, and in the years since we have deployed 305 graduates from over 50 universities. We offer stipends, health insurance and a travel allowances, which is expensive! As a result, we launched this appeal two years ago on Global Giving to offset some of the costs. So far we have received 107 donations totaling $14,637. We’re enormously grateful to you all!

Back to the Fellows themselves. This year we received 67 applications from 21 universities in 11 countries on all 5 continents. We selected ten Fellows from five universities. Here is how they performed:

Chris (studying at the University of Maryland) helped the Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU) in northern Uganda to install accessible latrines and washing facilities at the Awach Primary School, which has 991 pupils. This is the third time that GDPU has installed accessible toilets at a school, and after visiting the first two schools Chris reported that they seem to be raising enrollment and attendance - which is one of our main goals. Capping off a very successful fellowship, Chris also raised over $10,000 for the project through Global Giving and a foundation. Click here to view his excellent photos.

Colleen (Johns Hopkins University) spent an adventurous ten weeks in the Rift Valley of Kenya where she helped our partner, the Children Peace Initiative Kenya (CPI) to strengthen peace between pastoralists who had previously fought over cows. Colleen raised over $10,000 for the project on Global Giving. The money will purchase 50 cows that will be jointly reared by 100 families from the Samburu and Pokot tribes, giving both sides a serious incentive not to fight. This innovative approach, known as Heifers for Peace, is one reason why the two tribes have not fought for seven years. As you can see from her photos, Colleen was made to feel very welcome!

Komal (Fletcher School at Tufts University) worked with a group of strong women in western Nepal whose husbands and fathers disappeared during the conflict in Nepal. The women are all active in the National Network of Families of the Missing and Disappeared Nepal (NEFAD), an AP partner, and have formed a cooperative with our support. We asked Komal to help the women produce Tiger bags which are now on sale to tourists. Komal raised $1,595 and produced this video which explains why transitional justice matters to family members.

Michelle (Columbia University) worked with another long-time AP partner, Backward Society Education (BASE) in western Nepal, to free girls from domestic slavery. The girls are known as kamlaris and are separated from their families at a very early age. Michelle forged a friendship with Sunita, a remarkable young advocate who escaped from slavery and now heads an association of former kamlaris. Michelle and Sunita came up with the idea for a startup which will provide skills training and ID cards for her members. Michelle took some delightful photos of Tharu women in western Nepal.

Lindsey (New York University) had hoped to work at a health camp for village women organized by Care Women Nepal (CWN). Unfortunately, Lindsey came down with a serious case of appendicitis and had to return home early. Thankfully, she recovered quickly and managed to fit in more travel before returning to school! Check out Lindsey’s informative blog post about uterine prolapse.

Lara (Sciences Po) a French and German national, has spent the last six months at the organization CONCERN in Kathmandu where she worked with children from brick factories who have been enrolled in school through a project supported by AP since 2015. Lara was able to visit over 40 children, teachers and parents. She produced strong profiles, excellent photos  and blogs which examine all aspects of child labor. (Her final blog profiles a recruiter.) Lara concludes that our support has given the children a good education but has probably not prevented them from continuing to work after they return home from school. We will be taking this up with CONCERN.

Alex (Columbia University) did splendid work in Zimbabwe, where she helped the Women Advocacy Project (WAP) to design a new approach to the deep-rooted challenge of child marriage. Alex met with over 50 women and girls and conveyed their poignant message through powerful photos and strong blogs. WAP’s idea is to train strong-minded girls to serve as Ambassadors Against Child Marriage and persuade vulnerable girls and their families to reject early marriage. We look forward to supporting this exciting startup in 2019.

Marcela (University of Maryland) is still working with families affected by Agent Orange at the Association for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (AEPD) in Quang Binh province, Vietnam. Marcela has enjoyed a very successful fellowship. She raised over $2,000 on Global Giving for Thin and his wife Cao, who lost three children to dioxin poisoning. Marcela has also visited ten other families who have received a cow through AP and told their stories in her blogs.

Teresa (Columbia University), a Brazilian national, worked with women refugees from Iraq and Syria who receive support from the Collateral Repair Project (CRP) in Jordan. Past AP Fellows have raised money to train the refugees and this has allowed them to tell their stories through embroidered squares which we have assembled into four spectacular advocacy quilts. We are also excited that the women are selling their embroidery in Jordan. Teresa brought back another 24 squares, helped CRP to design a new strategy for using social media, and produced strong blogs.

Caroline (Fletcher School) helped the Centre for Agro-Ecology and Development (CAED) design a new campaign to end the dangerous practice of chhaupadi, which banishes women and girls to a cowshed during menstruation. Caroline worked with the CAED team in Surkhet where she interviewed women and girls and used her blogs to describe both the effects of chhaupadi and the growing resistance to the practice. Caroline rounded out a very productive fellowship by helping CAED build a new website and producing two chapters on chhaupadi for a report by Nepali women's groups that was presented recently to the UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women.

Reviewing these achievements, I’m sure you’ll understand why we consider this year’s Fellows to be among the best ever. Their work will benefit thousands of individuals and family members, strengthen our partner organizations, and provide AP with a series of innovative startups to support in 2019.

Equally important, our Fellows enjoyed a unique experience that will boost their confidence and position them for a career in human rights and development. Chris, who worked in Uganda, put it like this: “I’ve had twenty-eight summers in my life. However this one is the most memorable and impactful. Leaving Gulu was far from easy, but at least I can board my flight back to Maryland with the knowledge that my time and energy was spent in the service of others.” We’ll continue to monitor Chris and other past Fellows as they go on to do good work.

Finally, there are the unintended benefits from our fellowship program. These include the promotion of multiculturalism and diversity, which are under assault in today's world. Our ten Fellows this year came from Brazil, Kenya, France, the Netherlands, Germany and the US. They understand that we live in an interconnected world and they want to help. 

Your support has certainly made a difference!

We hope you can continue to support next year's Peace Fellows by donating to this same appeal on Giving Tuesday (November 27).

With deepest gratitude

Iain, Alexandra and the AP team

Links:

• Visit our website
• Check out our photos on Flickr

This report is coming to you from The Advocacy Project after an intense week-long training here in Washington with our 2018 Peace Fellows (photo above). Many of the ten Fellows have now left for their summer assignments, so this is an ideal time to be reporting back on how your donations have helped to fund this program.

We launched this appeal in June 2016, with the goal of recruiting 40 Fellows by the end of 2018. Up to this point we have deployed 30 Fellows from 12 universities to 10 countries – Vietnam, Nepal, Lebanon, Jordan, Greece, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mali and Peru. In all, since we started this program in 2003, 305 young professionals have gone out around the world to work for social justice and expanded their own horizons in the process. Your donations have helped to make that happen!

To judge from training last week, this year’s cohort could be one of the best ever. As we reported in a recent news bulletin, they are also ambassadors for multiculturalism – something we are very proud of. Five of the 10 Fellows are American. The rest are from Brazil, Kenya, Germany, and the Netherlands. As we reported in the bulletin Michelle, a Kenyan national who studies at Columbia University in New York, dropped everything for the chance to help free girls from servitude in Nepal this summer. Past Fellows came from 46 nationalities (photo below).

We train our Fellows in six different services and ask their hosts to decide which ones they need. The most important service, from our perspective, is program design and development. All Fellows will help their hosts develop a start-up that will eventually trigger social change and address the causes of injustice. They will not be there to witness this long-term outcome, but with luck and ingenuity they can help to set their host on the right track. Several of our current programs were inspired by past Fellows.

This year’s Fellows will be taking on some challenging issues that will be familiar from last year. Marcela will be working with families that were affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam. Lara will meet with 50 children that have been freed from the brick kilns of Nepal and placed in school. Also in Nepal, Lindsey will help Care Women Nepal to hold a health camp for village women with prolapse. Komal will be working with wives of the disappeared in the western district of Bardiya.

Chris will be installing an accessible toilet at the Awach School in northern Uganda. Teresa will help refugee women in Jordan to produce embroidery for sale. Colleen will follow last year’s Fellow, Talley (photo below) to Kenya where she will help to expand Heifers for Peace, a fascinating project that provides cows to warring pastoralists.

AP has raised thousands of dollars for these programs on Global Giving and we will be working with our Fellows to scale them up this summer. We will also be back-stopping Michelle, Caroline and Alex, who will all be launching new start-ups. Caroline will work on a campaign in Nepal to end the practice of menstrual banishment known as chhaupadi. Michelle will help her hosts to come up with a solution to the servitude of kamlaris – girls who are sold into domestic service in western Nepal. Alex will work at the Women Advocacy Project in Zimbabwe, where she will help to launch a program on child marriage.

It should be an exciting and active summer!

Among the five other services offered through Fellows, we help partners to strengthen their organizations by telling their story through blogs, photos and podcasts; making websites and using social media; producing annual reports;  raising funds through Global Giving; and promoting their work at the international level. Three partners – in Jordan, Nepal and Kenya – will be producing embroidered squares for advocacy quilts.

As in past years, we will monitor Fellows carefully while they are in the field and ask them to send us evaluations when they return in August. That will happen just in time for our next report to you, so we should have some results to report. We also invite you to follow the Fellows through their blogs, photos and our news bulletins, which will be appearing regularly through the summer.

As you may know from past reports, we hope that the fellowship experience will have a deep impact on these impressive young professionals. They will emerge more confident about working abroad, having learned skills that will hold them in good stead in their future careers. We have posted some past successes on our website.

Last week’s training showed how past Fellows have gone on to do fine work since leaving our program. No fewer than six former Fellows gave trainings. They included Ash (photo), who went to Peru for us in 2008 and now produces podcasts on hunger for the World Food Program; Karin, who followed Ash to Peru and teaches non-profit management at Johns Hopkins University; and Josh, who raised $4,500 for the first accessible toilet in Uganda and today runs a large company in Miami.

Looking back on his 2015 fellowship, Josh described it as a “once in a lifetime experience.” That’s what we hope to hear from this year’s splendid cohort!

Thank you again for making it happen!

Iain and the AP team.