The Office of National Fellowships and Scholarships (ONFS) is very pleased to announce that Ani Arzoumanian ’22 and Lucy Langan ’23 have received the prestigious Projects for Peace award. According to the Projects for Peace website, the global program “encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Along the way, these student leaders increase their knowledge, improve skills, and establish identities as peacebuilders and changemakers.”
The Projects for Peace award was founded by the late philanthropist and political activist Kathryn W. Davis, who once noted, “There will always be conflict, but I’ll remind you that love, kindness, and support are also part of human nature. My challenge to you is to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace instead of preparing for war.” Each year, 100 or more students embark on their individually proposed projects for peace — anywhere in the world — to fulfill this mission.
Ani and Lucy are excited to pursue their unique projects this summer in Armenia and upstate New York, respectively. Ani’s project, Epidemiology of Ambulance Calls in Rural Armenia, aims to collect and analyze de-identified ambulance patient data to further understand the effects of war and COVID-19 on EMS capabilities. Ultimately, Ani hopes to help the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Armenia improve utilization and quality of these services.
Lucy’s project, Indigenous Resistance in Upstate New York: An Anti-Colonial Field Trip Guide, aims to highlight and amplify histories of Indigenous resistance, Indigenous epistemologies, and the legacies of colonialism in the upstate New York region. Through working with the Oneida Nation’s Shako:wi Cultural Center, Lucy hopes to produce a developmentally appropriate and pedagogically grounded field trip guide for student visitors.
ONFS encourages current students to apply for the Projects for Peace award next year. For more information about this award, and other fellowship and scholarship opportunities, please reach out to ONFS Program Coordinator Anna Brown at ajbrownstaff@colgate.edu for more information.