Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

2008 Recipients of Peace Projects Funding

Ishmail Sheriff Daoh, Dan Mahle, Syed Mafiz "Onik" Kamal and Jamie Utt are among the winners of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace competition. Earlham will fund a peace project devised by Safia Ansari (second from right).

RICHMOND, Ind. — Fruit trees, art and music will be used by five Earlham students to promote peace this summer thanks to winning $10,000 funding for their initiatives.

Two of the projects, one proposed by seniors Dan Mahle and Jamie Utt and another proposed by first-year students Syed Mafiz "Onik" Kamal and Ishmail Sheriff Daoh, are among winners of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace competition, while senior Spanish major Safia Ansari's project was selected for funding by Earlham President Doug Bennett.

The Projects for Peace program is in its second year and honors philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who launched the initiative on her 100th birthday to encourage motivated youth to create and implement their ideas for building peace throughout the world.

Mahle and Utt's project, "Change from Within: A Verbal Vehicle for Peace and Youth Empowerment" is a speaking and performance tour that will be presented at schools, conferences, camps and other venues throughout the summer. Their tour already has five engagements including stops in the state of Washington and Washington, D.C.

"The name of this project reflects our belief that the changes we want to see in the world must begin from within each of us," says Mahle, who along with friend Ian Shaw formed the socially conscious hip-hop music group IDeology in 2003 in their hometown of Boulder, Colo. During the tour, IDeology will perform several songs before introducing Utt's interactive, hands-on presentation titled "The Wall." For the past four years Utt has presented "The Wall" to combat prejudice, bigotry and hate to audiences around the country.

"We're mixing entertainment with a message," says Mahle. "We're bridging the gap between young people and some pretty serious discussion they might not readily jump into."

"Because Dan's music is entertaining yet powerfully focused on social justice, it has the power to draw in young people to think about social justice issues," says Utt of Grand Junction, Colo. "My interactive presentation then offers practical, hands-on processes for finding constructive solutions to combat prejudice, bigotry and hate in our world. By working together, I think the project offers a way for most anyone to find solutions in their own lives to some of the real and pressing peace issues facing our world today."

The two Peace and Global Studies majors say they hope to inspire positive change by mobilizing young people to promote peace in their own communities.

Kamal and Daoh will work in Daoh's hometown of Freetown, Sierra Leone, this summer to establish an art school for former child soldiers.

Their project is entitled "Arts for Peace" and partners with iEARN, a non-governmental organization working with the reintegration of child combatants in Sierra Leone. iEARN will provide the room for the art school, which will be furnished with paint, brushes, easels and canvases that are purchased with grant money.

"If a child knows how to use a gun before going to school, and thousands of such children exist in Sierra Leone, then the future peace of the nation is very fragile," Kamal says. "I believe these children need to be helped and their creative skill development should be encouraged. This is a small attempt toward that process."

Daoh says he is excited to work to relieve some of the lingering tensions caused by tribal wars in his home country.

"Sometimes there is still that feeling of tension in different areas, and maybe we can help erase that and show that we can all work together," he says. The two say their project will give former child soldiers the hope of regaining a place in society and a platform to expand their talents.

A weeklong workshop with 30 ex-combatants will culminate with an arts festival, and the completed art pieces will be shipped to Earlham, where Kamal and Daoh have set up a management group to sell the paintings for $40 to $70. Half of the proceeds go back to the child soldiers, and the other half will go to iEARN, which will continue to manage and supply equipment to the art school at the end of the summer.

"We believe that if a young man can be taught to use a gun, then he can also be taught to use a paintbrush provided he has interest in it," says Kamal, who is from Bangladesh and enjoys painting. "We also want to show people of the world the images of war-ravaged Sierra Leone and art is an excellent way to do so."

Safia Ansari of Bloomington, Ind., was chosen by President Bennett to receive funding for her reforestation project, "Planting the Seeds of Peace for the Youth of Posoltega."

Posoltega is a town in Nicaragua that was regarded as a paradise with abundant fruit trees prior to 1998, when Hurricane Mitch struck killing more than 2,500 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Mudslides from the hurricane, deforestation and destructive pesticides have created a bare landscape. Ansari has been involved in Posoltega during three service trips while in high school as part of the Bloomington-Posoltega Sister Cities program.

Since the hurricane, families have been forced to use what little money they have to repair their homes with none left over to send the children to school, Ansari says. This has created a feeling of hopelessness for the youth, and many have resorted to living destructive lives. Nearly 75 percent of teens there abuse alcohol and 60 percent take drugs, she reports.

Ansari aims to give the youth hope by involving them in planting 500 fruit trees in areas destroyed by the mudslides. Planting the trees will provide multiple benefits by engaging the youth in a healthful activity, helping reforest areas with little or no vegetation, providing a nutritious food source, and providing an income from selling the surplus fruit.

In addition to the tree-planting project, Ansari will organize four team-building workshops around the topic of reforestation and community service.

Initially Ansari wondered how she would connect tree planting and peace, then she remembered some of the teenagers she had hung out with during her previous visits and the issues they faced.

"I realized that they could really use my help," she says. "I needed to help the youth find peace by involving them in a peacebuilding activity as an alternative to their harmful habits."

Davis Projects for Peace invited students from schools participating in the Davis United World College (UWC) Scholars Program to submit plans for grassroots projects for peace, to be implemented during the summer of 2008. A competition for the funding took place on 81 of the 88 campuses in the UWC Scholars Program, which provides grants to select American colleges and universities in support of students from all over the world who have completed their pre-university studies at UWC schools.

"We are grateful to the many students, faculty and staff who participated in this year's competition," said Executive Director of the Davis UWC Scholars Program Philip O. Geier. "Kathryn Davis is a leader, and what she has set in motion with this important challenge is a growing number of young people committed to putting into place the building blocks for peace."

Contact:
Mark Blackmon, director of media relations
765/983-1256 — E-Mail Mark