News Release Date:
Thursday, Mar 20, 2008
WALLA
WALLA,
Wash. — Henry Musa Kpaka ’09 has been
awarded a prestigious fellowship to attend the Public Policy &
International Affairs Program at
Princeton
University this summer. The
stated goal of the summer program is to help prepare students for graduate
study and then careers in public policy and international affairs. The program
achieves this by providing a mix of academic course work, lectures and off-site
visits. In the seven weeks he will spend at the
Princeton’s
Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Kpaka said he
hopes to gain insight that will help him to realize his career goal of continuing
to help people in developing countries.
Kpaka, a
Davis UCW scholar from
Sierra Leone
who attended school in
Singapore
,
already has a working knowledge of programming in developing countries. With a
$10,000 grant he received from the 2007 Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects
for Peace, he created the “Youth Empowerment in Sierra Leone,” project, a
three-day national empowerment workshop for young people in his home country.
“My long-term
focus is on development,” said Kpaka. “I’m really focused on helping people in
developing countries and I got that by growing up in
Sierra Leone
and seeing how the
affect of the war eroded any developments that would have helped my household
and the nation as a whole.” Rounding out his perspective, he said, were the
experiences he had volunteering at a hospital in
Singapore
and with a youth group in
Kenya
before attending Whitman.
The civil
war that wracked
Sierra
Leone
for 11 years and ended in 2002 had a devastating
influence on the young people of the country, leaving them without hope or
direction, said Kpaka. With his 2007 summer project he wanted to instill in young
people that they had the ability and the responsibility to make positive changes
in their country. The success of his youth empowerment program showed him the
possibilities.
The 167 youths that attended were each encouraged
to create a community service project, with funding going to the winning
project. The summer 2007 winning initiative was for a malaria prevention
project, but there were many more projects that Kpaka would like to finance in
the future, including plans for road safety programs and education for girls in
Sierra Leone
.
Toward that end, he created the campus “Youth Development Initiative” group which now consists of a core group of Whitman students who are raising money for a return trip to Sierra Leone this summer where they plan to finance another 14 projects. Long-term plans for the YDI at Whitman include a continuing and growing presence on campus that creates more programs in Sierra Leone and possibly in other developing countries, said Kpaka.
“I would
like to show young people in
Sierra
Leone
that they can make a difference in their own communities,” said Kpaka, who
added that although he knows that the YDI is a substantial and important
program, “I still need to get a firmer grasp in order to continue doing this
work effectively. That’s what I’m really hoping to get at the PPIA.” He is
considering returning to
Princeton for graduate
school and earning perhaps an advanced degree in international relations, or a
masters in development combined with a law degree.
In the mean
time, he’s not slowing down. The seven-week
Princeton
program ends Aug. 1. He and several YDI members will fly to
Sierra Leone
on Aug. 4, continue
the work of last summer’s project and award 14 grants of $500 each to
youth-inspired projects before returning on Aug. 24 in time to begin classes at
Whitman on Sept. 1. The YDI is continuing fundraising efforts, in order to fund
its ambitious plan.
CONTACT:
Lenel Parish
Whitman
College
News Service
(509) 527-5156
parishlj@whitman.edu
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