Clark Diaries

1st Feb, 2009

Peace Project and GSP Academic Panel

Hey everyone,

This was a good and busy week. I had two quizzes and a five-page paper due, also I finished the UWC Peace Project proposal with my two other group members. The Davis UWC 100 Project for Peace was created and funded by Kathryn W. Davis, who is a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist, in 2007. It is “an initiative for all students at the Davis UWC Scholars Program schools to design their own grassroots projects for peace that they themselves will implement anywhere in the world during the summer of 2009″. Clark joined the program last year, and three senior students received the fund to establish an Opportunities Center in Namibia in order to “assist Namibia women in breaking the cycle of violence”. It is a great opportunity for students to create and carry out their own ideas to promote peace in the world, and therefore make a difference to the community, locally and globally. My friends and I proposed a project called “H.E.A.L–Helping Earthquake Affected Lives” to help traumatized school students who suffered in the Sichuan Earthquake through a two-week summer program. Also, we hope to educate university students who volunteer in the program of their importance as human resources to the young people and as role models, and inspire them to make a difference in their own community. We will wait for the decision of the committee for the next two weeks. Hopefully we will be chosen and implement the project this summer. There are many other student initiative research opportunities like this at Clark, such as the Anton and Steinbrecher Fellowship Program. Students can take their own initiative to challenge convention and change the world.

On Thursday night, I went to the Global Scholar Academic Panel at the three conference rooms in University Center. Every year, we Global Scholars will organize two academic panels about global issues, for example, “The human trafficking”, and “Illegal Arms Trade”. This semester the topic was “The Hidden Wars”. They talked about the discrimination against Mexicans in the US, the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat and the Indian conflicts. I found it really informative; I didn’t know there were so many “Hidden” and serious clashes going on around the world. There were also a little bit of food and refreshments in the common area, where people can eat and discuss about the topics. Here are some pictures.