Students receive grant to provide health education in Zambia
Three Trinity students have received a $10,000 grant from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace Initiative to provide HIV/AIDS health education in Zambia. Initially, the students planned to travel to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for their project. However, with the current political unrest in Honduras, the project as originally proposed could not be carried out.
Selected for their proposal entitled “Developing Peace through Health Education,” Jacob Gire, Alden Gordon, and Michael Pierce, all members of the Class of 2010, adapted their original project plan, and instead worked with a nonprofit organization, STS (Stop the Spread), which operates near Ndola, Zambia. There, the students shared an HIV/AIDS health education curriculum through games, skits, music, and small-group discussions, as they worked with five high schools located in Mufulira, Murundu, and Kitwe. The three students focused much of their time in the village of Murundu, where they arranged to work at an orphanage and with local hospital clinics.
The 100 Projects for Peace Initiative is supported by 102-year-old philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis. College and university students from nearly 100 campuses will collectively received $1 million in funding during the summer of 2009 for projects in all regions of the world. Davis launched the initiative on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007 and has renewed her challenge for a third year so that this generation of college students can undertake innovative and meaningful projects. At Trinity, the grant opportunity was coordinated through the Center for Urban and Global Studies, headed by Dr. Xiangming Chen.
Two other Trinity student teams that did not receive Davis Foundation funds were so committed to their projects that they went ahead and raised money from other sources. Ibrahim Diallo ’11, Andrea Wise ’11, and Nathan Kirschbaum ’09 went to Guinea to build a primary school in a remote village. They raised money through individual donations through their Web site and from the Political Science and International Studies departments at Trinity. Additional funding came from the Kenneth S. Grossman ’78 Global Studies Fund at Trinity, which was established in honor of Professor Eugene E. Leach, and which supports student investigations of global issues that will confront humankind collectively in the 21st century. Look for a video documenting their project at Web Extras.
Deniz Vatansever ’10 received $2,500 from a student-initiated grant through the Faculty Research Committee and an additional $1,000 from the Kenneth S. Grossman ’78 Global Studies Fund to establish a nursing office at primary schools in the city of Bursa in Turkey.
Top colleges and universities participate in QuestBridge Scholarship program
This fall, as Trinity welcomes the Class of 2013, nine new first-year students will be particularly excited to be on campus. They are recipients of College Match scholarships from QuestBridge, a nonprofit program that links talented low-income students with educational and scholarship opportunities at top colleges and universities around the country. In partnership with QuestBridge, Trinity provides the admitted students with scholarships that cover the full cost of attending the College, including room, board, and an allowance for books and supplies.
QuestBridge was started in 2003 by Michael McCullough, a former emergency room doctor, to increase the numbers of students from families of modest economic means at the nation’s top colleges. McCullough hopes “to reinvigorate America with more thoughtful and sincere leaders, drawn from the lowest economic quartile.” The average QuestBridge scholar has a family income of $32,000, and many of the students never expected to be able to attend a college like Trinity. Trinity has admitted students from the program each year since 2003; three QuestBridge scholars graduated in May with the Class of 2009.
According to Larry Dow, dean of admissions and financial aid, “Partnering with QuestBridge has allowed Trinity to draw from geographical areas where we are not as well known. The QuestBridge students are very bright and very promising, and without the aggressive, national outreach provided by the QuestBridge organization, would probably not have even become candidates for Trinity, much less actual enrollees. We’re very excited to be among the limited number of extremely prestigious colleges and universities partnering with QuestBridge, and I’m proud to say that Trinity was one of the first institutions to become affiliated with this unusual and excellent program.”
