1. Cultivating a Community of Care

Leading a grassroots project with an non-governmental organization (NGO) to address public health and food security in Tanzania and teaching English to university students in Uganda may seem like a lifetime's worth of adventures to many people, but Allie Stankewich '23 has completed all of this since graduating from Washington and Lee University - and she's just getting started.

Through the Davis Projects for Peace Grant, Stankewich spent four weeks in the summer of 2023 working with the Widows Encouragement & HIV/AIDS Foundation (WEHAF), an NGO based in Arusha, Tanzania, before embarking on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Uganda, which she completed in June.

Stankewich first connected with WEHAF and its director and co-founder, Theresia George Mollel, when she spent Fall Term 2022 in Arusha, studying Swahili through the Boren Scholarship.

"I was inspired by Theresia's work and commitment to address an issue of public health and vulnerability for women - specifically women facing HIV - in her own community," Stankewich said. "When I returned to W&L and learned about the Davis grant, I immediately thought of her and began brainstorming how I could collaborate with her and help make an impact."

At W&L, Stankewich had found herself gravitating toward ways she could make an impact through food and nutrition and became involved with Campus Kitchen at W&L (CKWL) during her first year as a member of the #HungerFighters cohort. She also interned with CKWL her first summer and became engaged with the Campus Garden, focusing on community outreach and hunger relief programs in Lexington and Rockbridge County. An environmental studies and sociology double major with a minor in poverty and human capability studies, Stankewich also credits her coursework and the relationships with her professors for helping her focus her passion and inspiring her to think about environmental issues through a human-focused lens.

"I loved that W&L had the environmental humanities track within the environmental studies major, because my passion for this is largely how environmental issues play out in the lives of real people and how those have been determinants of inequity, especially in people's living environments and their overall health," she said.

When planning her proposal for the Davis grant, Stankewich also considered her academic background in environmental studies, her passion for food security and public health and her work with Campus Kitchen and the Campus Garden. Finding the perfect intersection of her academic and personal interests, Stankewich worked with Mollel to develop an initiative through WEHAF centered on nutrition education. The project focused on building vegetable gardens at schools in Arusha and integrating the hands-on work with a nutrition education curriculum.

"Every single one of these experiences has been something I wouldn't have planned for or expected the year before. I've been able to chase curiosity, and [this is] a privilege that W&L afforded me."

~ Allie Stankewich '23

Building Trust

Upon receiving the Davis grant in the spring of 2023, Stankewich was excited to reconnect with the community she had forged during her semester abroad and to conduct meaningful work for and alongside them. However, ahead of her month in Tanzania, she realized this would be the first time she entered another country independently and not under the supervision of a study abroad program, and she felt the weight of responsibility.

Aware that in her role with WEHAF she would be making decisions with real consequences on people's lives, Stankewich knew she had to be intentional in her leadership. She built trust with community members by communicating almost exclusively in Swahili, the local language.

"I think the ability to connect to other people's language, which they are so excited to share, made me feel so much more comfortable in that space as well as trusted within that space," Stankewich said. "Relying on Swahili also helped me rectify some of the expected tensions, like how my power and privilege as an American in that space can be misinterpreted or carries historical symbolism of aid in more harmful ways."

As she reimmersed herself in the daily life of Arusha, Stankewich was struck by how community-driven the culture is and the generosity people extend to everyone, whether they are friends or strangers.

"There is an incredible sense of giving and of care for one another that exceeds anything I've observed in the United States," Stankewich said. "It doesn't correlate to the material quantity of what one has but rather their priorities for taking care of one another and treating each other like human beings. That sense of humanity resounds in every space I've been in."

Channeling Her Passions

Stankewich is interested in pursuing a career in international development or global public health, and her time at WEHAF inspired her to think about how change can happen at grassroots levels, in addition to changes enacted by policy decisions. Pursuing large-scale change can sometimes become abstract or feel overwhelming, but her work with WEHAF helped her better understand that she can meaningfully engage in change-focused work through local action and by developing relationships with the communities she serves.

"I think the Davis grant is an amazing way to channel these big passions and ideas into something a little smaller because then it's actionable and you get to see real results," Stankewich said. "My project reinforced a lot of what I had thought about in the abstract by getting to do it with my hands and with real people. It helped me realize that's where I find value, and whatever my career path might look like in the future, I want to make sure I still have that tangible relationship-building opportunity with the communities and the people on the other side of the work I do."

Stankewich's time in Tanzania also reinforced her investment in - and love for - the East Africa region. Following her partnership with WEHAF, Stankewich completed her Fulbright ETA in Uganda from September 2023 through June 2024. And her work there isn't done; the Fulbright Program offered to extend her position, and she will serve as the regional ETA mentor this coming year, allowing her to deepen her involvement and connections in Kampala, Uganda, while supporting the incoming ETA cohort.

"Every single one of these experiences has been something I wouldn't have planned for or expected the year before, and a lot of these have come from spontaneous opportunities that arose and I said yes to," Stankewich said. "I've been able to chase curiosity, and [this is] a privilege that W&L afforded me. These amazing scholarships and grants, and the flexibility in my academic schedule to pursue them, have led to all these rich experiences that opened my mind in so many different ways that I never could have imagined. It sometimes leaves me with more uncertainties, but it's because of the exciting chance to have been able to see and learn immensely in this world - and I have W&L to thank for that."

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