This year we had an amazing set of applications from 10 students. We wished we could support all of their projects!

This year’s winners are:

Bridget Adarkwa (’17) and Nailah Hines (’17)

Their project supports the Girl’s Education Initiative of Ghana, in Ghana’s Ashanti and Greater Accra regions. GEIG is dedicated to the professional and academic success of women in Ghana. They will be using their unique skills in communication and marketing, background that includes working with radio stations, the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, to assist GEIG. They will be creating a new marketing campaign for that organization, and assist their summer internship and volunteer program by conducting a program evaluation, something else they already have background in.

 

Matthew Shelley-Reade (’17)

Matthew’s work will be in Rwanda, on a project titled: Mitigating Climate Change and Protecting Biodiversity along the Albertine Rift. His unique background includes extensive experience with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) research. And it includes impressive documentary film-making, for projects on Middletown’s history (his senior thesis), on the quinoa industry in Peru (which included travel and interviews in that country), and with a PBS television series. For this project, he will partner with Biocoop an environmental non-profit that promotes issues of environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity conservation. This organization is a bottom-up organization, working with youth, local communities, and local farmers in its projects. He will be helping the team develop community education projects, using GIS and developing video materials to assist in community outreach. He will film Biocoop activities the entire time he is there, with the purpose of creating promotional materials for that organization.