Fatima Elkabti ’09 recently received the Davis Peace Award, given to students who seek to promote world peace through international projects. She will travel to the West Bank for several weeks in June to establish a series of writing workshops that she hopes will connect a group of American children with their Palestinian peers.
Elkabti’s workshops will promote self-expression and communication using three different mediums: writing, illustration, and song. Her American and Palestinian students will establish pen pal relationships with each other, produce an illustrated storybook of American and Palestinian children’s stories, and create a music video about feelings. In the past, Elkabti has worked with Jumpstart, taught Arabic to fourth graders at Sumner Elementary School in Claremont, and served as a writing tutor at Scripps College.
By encouraging students on both sides to express themselves and communicate with one another, Elkabti, an English and biology major, aims to broad children’s horizons and create a bridge between otherwise unlinked worlds. She hopes that her project will create tomorrow’s advocates for peace. “The crux of this project relies on the lessons children will learn from each other—lessons that will replace misconstrued perceptions of other peoples with a deeper understanding of alternative cultures and lifestyles,” she said.
Davis Projects for Peace are funded by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist who sees an urgent need to spark initiatives that build prospects for peace in the world.