Students Receive us$12,500 for Peace Work in Nicaragua
“One in every two women in Nicaragua has been physically mistreated at some point by her husband or companion,” according to the United Nations inter-agency campaign on women’s human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In an effort to address this domestic violence, four seniors from Lewis & Clark College were awarded a us$10,000 grant from philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis and us$2,500 from Lewis & Clark College.

Seniors Elizabeth Fussell, Frazer Lanier, Megan McBride and Kate Iris Hilburger will spend the summer working at the Xochilt Clínica, a community-run health clinic in El Viejo, Nicaragua.

The grant money will provide funding to the clinic for women’s health care efforts. The team will organize educational workshops to promote sexual health education and awareness of domestic violence for adults, and theater workshops to address health and safety issues in the home for young people.

The grant from Kathryn Wasserman Davis came through the 100 Projects for Peace program. This program, designed by Davis as a national competition, awarded 100 projects designed to promote peace $10,000 each.

“Peace is often discussed in a political context as an end to war, but there are a lot of ways that violence manifests itself in people’s lives,” said McBride. “We wanted to do something that would really be meaningful for people who are on the receiving end of a lot of structural violence and inequalities.”

The team will begin their work in Nicaragua in June.

Fussell, who has worked at the Xochilt Clínica twice before, will be graduating in May along with Lanier and McBride; Hilburger will graduate in December.

“I’m really looking forward to this project as an opportunity to organize and collaborate with three friends whom I’ve worked well with over the past four years,” said McBride. “There’s plenty of time to have jobs and apartments and think about more school. This is an opportunity we just could not pass up.”