Fairfax Native Wins Peace Award

A Fairfax City native is among a group of students from Bard College in upstate New York to win an award and $10,000 grant for their international peace project.

Cultural anthropology major Nadine Tadros of Fairfax, a member of Bard College's class of 2014, worked together with three other students to form the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative (BPYI), which they just found out has won them a collective 2013 Davis Award for Peace.

BPYI, an entirely student-run organization, was founded in 2008 with the belief that "constructive civil engagement, cultural exchange, and education are fundamental means to building a viable and sustainable Palestinian State."

By working in collaboration with the people of Mas’ha, a small village in the West Bank, BPYI hopes to create a nonpolitical, action-oriented program with the goal of connecting Palestine with Bard College and its surrounding area.

Every year, 20 Bard College students travel to Mas’ha, where they partner with the local community to run children’s summer camps and community service projects, teach English classes, and engage in cultural discourse.

BPYI established the only public children’s library in Palestine, which opened with a ceremony in August of 2010, attended by members of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem and the governor of Sulfite Province.

In 2011, with the help of the Davis Peace Grant, BPYI built the first playground in the village of Mas’ha. In 2012, BPYI began building a youth center for the village, which they were unable to complete in full. This summer, the awardees will use the $10,000 in Davis Projects for Peace funds that comes with their award to complete renovations of the three-floor youth center.

The Davis Project for Peace award staff sent out a statement this week congratulating the group on its win, as well as their fellow student Saim Saeed of Pakistan, who also won for his project.

"Competition is keen, and we congratulate the students whose projects have been selected for funding in 2013," said Philip O. Geier, executive director of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, which administers Projects for Peace. “Kathryn Davis feels a great urgency about advancing the cause of peace in the world, and she is investing in motivated youth and their ideas in order to accelerate efforts for peace in the 21st century," he said of the award's namesake and benefactor.

On the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007, philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis launched Projects for Peace. Now 106 years “young,” Davis has renewed her commitment every year since.

More than $1.2 million will be awarded in $10,000-grants to students for projects to be completed over the summer of 2013.

The winning projects propose specific plans of action that will have lasting effects—including post-conflict community building, youth empowerment and education programs, improved community water supplies worldwide, and a multitude of agrarian enterprises in countries where famine is pervasive.

Students will travel to countries in all regions of the world to work on their projects and report on their experiences once they return.

Undergraduates at 90 partner schools of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, as well as those at International Houses Worldwide, Future Generations, the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and the University of Maine, are invited annually to submit plans for Projects for Peace. Winning proposals selected from competitions at all these campuses are funded through Davis’s generosity.

For further information, visit www.davisprojectsforpeace.org.

What do you think of Nadine's project, the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative? Tell us in the comments.

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