Peace is not just the absence of war. For a true and lasting peace, people need access to food, shelter and education-as well as a voice in their future. Two College of the Atlantic students, sophomore Margaret Longley of San Juan Island, WA and senior Katarina Jurikova of Slovakia will be spending the summer promoting this kind of peace thanks to a Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace award. These awards came about in 2007, on Davis' 100th birthday, when she committed $1 million to fund 100 grassroots projects by college students to, she said, "bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world." This year, Davis has repeated her gift.
 
Longley, a filmmaker who worked in the Iraqi war zone on the academy award-nominated film, "Iraq in Fragments," will be creating a film on the disenfranchisement of the homeless with her project, "Homelessness and Voting in a Democracy." Jurikova will create two gardens in Uganda.

"There is a great disparity between the homeless and those with homes," says Longley, "but this disparity does not come solely from the difference in the physical surroundings of what each group calls home. The disparity stems from the difference in how each group experiences their shared social environment: one as an accepted member and one as a disenfranchised outcast." To bridge this divide, Longley will spend the summer documenting the lives and struggles of members of the homeless community in Seattle, WA, focusing on those with compelling stories and those who have been active in gaining a strong political voice and rights for the homeless.

A certified Emergency Medical Technician with interests in photojournalism and photography, Longley is dividing her time at COA between pre-med and film classes.

For the garden project, "Gardens for Women and Children in Fort Portal, Uganda," Jurikova will be returning to the eastern Ugandan town of Fort Portal where she had previously worked with children and women, many suffering the consequences of HIV/AIDS. She plans to create two Kathryn Davis Community Gardens, one for AIDS widows, women who traditionally have a great deal of agricultural knowledge but no access to land except through men. While raising low-maintenance, high sustenance crops like cassava, corn, beans and groundnuts, Jurikova hopes the women will find a place to talk and perhaps generate new ideas. The second garden is for children suffering from AIDS. These children often cannot afford medication, so good nutrition is often the only way to prolong their lives. The gardens will offer the children some social support as well as access to traditional agricultural heritage.

Jurikova has focused on the meaning of agriculture to communities in her studies at COA. She is currently completing a major project on women's ability to achieve food security, based on research in Chiapas, Mexico. Eventually, she plans to attend a graduate program in development studies.

In addition to the 100 undergraduates students from 81 college and universities receiving funding for their projects for peace, Davis is funding 20 graduate student projects through the global institution, International House. Among those receiving a prize is Nikhit d'Sa, a 2006 graduate of COA, currently enrolled at Columbia University's Teacher's College. For his project, "From Apathy to Action:  Educating against Child Abuse in Jamaica," he will return to Jamaica to work with the street children he met during a Watson Fellowship in 2007.

Davis is an internationalist and philanthropist, the mother of Shelby M.C. Davis, who funds the Davis United World College Scholar 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 in one of the 12 United World College schools. These schools, located on five continents, are dedicated to promoting international understanding through education.

"My many years have taught me that there will always be conflict," said Davis. "It's part of human nature. But love, kindness and support are also part of human nature, and my challenge to these young people is to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace instead of preparing for war."

College of the Atlantic is a small college on the Maine coast awarding a BA and MPhil in Human Ecology. It was founded in 1969 on the premise that education should go beyond understanding the world as it is to enabling students to actively participate in shaping its future. The collaborative, interdisciplinary, experiential approach ensures that students' quest for scientific, spiritual, social and artistic knowledge comes with the depth of an individualized curriculum, developing creative thinkers and doers. Education is active, hands-on, often through original sources. Students are fully involved in the community, in governance, in their own education.

For more information on the Projects for Peace program, visit www.davisprojectsforpeace.org. For more information on College of the Atlantic, visit www.coa.edu.

PHOTO CREDITS:
Photo of Margaret Longley by James Longley.
Photo of Katarina Jurikova by Toby Hollis.