When then-seniors Casey Beck and Austin Blair (both LA '07) won a one-time $10,000 grant last year to study the effects of global warming on Pacific Islanders, which they presented in a project titled The Rising Tide: Kiribati," it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
But against expectations, Tufts students will be eligible again this year for grant funding through the Projects for Peace program thanks to a large donation from one of the program's founders.
In celebration of her 100th birthday last year, accomplished internationalist and philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis donated $1 million to the Davis United World Scholars Program. The funding provided students from 76 universities, including Tufts, with grants to fund 100 grassroots projects across the world focused on various international issues.
Due to the program's success last year, Wasserman Davis decided to donate $1 million this year to fund another set of projects. As a result, students at Tufts and other schools across the country will again have the opportunity to apply.
"We thought [last year] would be the only time it would occur," said Dale Bryan, the assistant director for the peace and justice studies program. "We were completely surprised when it came up again."
Each of the 76 schools will submit one winning team to receive a $10,000 grant. The 24 remaining grants will go to "runner-up" teams submitted by each of the schools.
Applications for this year's funding will be due on Jan. 22. This Friday, an information session will be held to discuss the application process, which involves writing a proposal and a budget plan. Bryan and Kirk Lange, assistant director of international relations, are co-chairs of a committee that will help students develop project proposals.
Bryan said the concept of developing a proposal and budget plan can be daunting.
"For a number of students, when they sit down to actually think about what it takes to get from here to there, they get overwhelmed," Bryan said.
According to Bryan, the committee will help students by performing administrative tasks, such as corresponding with international organizations, and by providing input on teams' proposals.
Once the applications are finished, Bryan will forward them to another committee, which will review the applications without knowledge of the students' names. Each school will select its first-choice team, which automatically wins a grant, and will nominate a runner-up whose application will be directly reviewed by the Davis Program.
Bryan stressed that the grant is not limited to students from any particular major or field of interest. Last year, Tufts' winning team members were from very different fields of study: Beck was a peace and justice studies major, while Blair was a biology major.
This summer, the team spent two months in the small island nation of Kiribati, photographing and taking video footage of daily life there. When they returned, they printed photos and created a documentary about their trip, which was displayed in the Aidekman Arts Center in September.
Blair and Beck also created a concise, 11-minute, 30-second version of their documentary, which they have since shown to high school students, graduate students at Syracuse University and at a New York University event called "Climate Change and Sinking Islands."
Although their project required extensive budget planning, Blair said that he and Beck were surprised by how simple the application process was.
"To apply for this was really not even strenuous," Blair said. "We didn't have to write a novel to apply ... I felt like they had put more confidence in us because of the streamlined application process."
Blair said the project was both educational and interesting to complete.
"Overall it was a good experience," Blair said. "There were snags for sure, but it was good."
Paul Joseph, the chair of Tufts' peace and justice studies department, will be the head of the selection committee for this year's grant recipients. He said that he is encouraging teams to consider domestic peace issues, including school violence, gun control, hate crimes and the American justice system.
"The thing that was striking to me last year was that almost all of [the applications] were dealing with international issues," Joseph said. "Only two looked at the United States, and I think this country internally needs peace."
Beck urged this year's applicants to be creative when developing a proposal.
"Dream it," Beck said. "Just let go of all preconceived notions of what you can and cannot do."
Joseph said the program is truly unique in that it allows students to go beyond the small-scale projects they might complete on a college campus.
"It's unusual," Joseph said. "It gives some fairly substantial resources ... so it encourages students to think a little more ambitiously ... It also takes a very broad concept of peace."
Joseph and Beck both believe that the program's sizeable funding and expansive understanding of the meaning of peace permits teams to be imaginative.
"I think the best thing about Projects for Peace is that it allows extreme creativity," Beck said. "It really allows students to think completely out of the box. [Our project] probably would not have been funded if not by Projects for Peace because of its uniqueness."
And without funding, Beck said, the project would never have happened.
"The money goes a long way," she said. "For our project, half of the budget went to flights. I mean, who else is going to pay $5,000 for flights? That's kind of a hard sell."
Bryan said the intellectual environment at Tufts is a good match with the goals of Projects for Peace.
"The culture of Tufts is conducive to students for participating in this project," he said. "If active citizenship is more than just a brand, but is accepted as part of an ethos for some of the students, then this is a terrific opportunity."
