Bard College Student Wins Davis Projects For Peace Prize

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Bard College student Eric Raimondi ’19 has been awarded a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace Prize in support of his work with refugees and asylum seekers on the island of Samos, Greece. In its 13th year, the Davis Projects for Peace program invited undergraduates to design grassroots peace-building projects to be implemented during the summer of 2019 and selected the most promising and feasible projects to be funded.

For his project, Raimondi will establish a multi-genre language curriculum at the Samos refugee camp. The refugee camp was converted from a military detention center to an asylum processing center after 2011 when war and terrorism began to displace millions of people. According to UNHCR statistics, there are now close to 4,100 people living within the confines of the camp, which was designed to accommodate only 740 people. In response to the lack of educational facilities for refugee children, a new NGO, Still I Rise, established the Mazi youth center for minors between the ages of 12 and 17. Today, about 200 students voluntarily attend the center. In partnership with the Mazi youth center, Raimondi will provide a seminar-style, creative writing and literature academic course for refugee students 15-17 years old with a working knowledge of English. This course is modeled after Bard College’s Language and Thinking humanities curriculum, a program that utilizes multiple types of literature, encourages different writing styles, and is a requirement of all undergraduate students. The structure of this class serves to stimulate young refugees’ creative growth, personal expression, and English literacy and to provide a space that is both educational and imaginative, allowing students a physical and emotional departure from the monotonous life within the overcrowded camp.

“I am committed to implementing a new academic program with the Mazi school that will not only benefit refugees during the summer of 2019: I am confident that this project will also serve as a template for future endeavors on the island and will improve refugee students’ access to a quality education on Samos for years to come,” says Raimondi.

Projects for Peace was created in 2007 through the generosity of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist who believed that today’s youth—tomorrow’s leaders—ought to be challenged to formulate and test their own ideas. davisprojectsforpeace.org.
 

This event was last updated on 05-01-2019

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