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The 5th Annual Children of Abraham Peace Essay Contest is underway!
This year's Award Ceremony will be held at Georgetown University's Riggs Library, located in Healy Hall, Sunday, March 28, 2010, 3-5pm, followed by a reception.
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The kick-off took place on Sunday, November 8th and was a great success.
Click here to read more.
The Common Cause Award granted to FFC by the Fetzer Institute enables us to continue the funding of young leaders by sponsoring projects they have designed and initiated, and our micro-grant program will be a focus of this year’s kick-off event. These awards consist of a grant of $1,000 and a matching grant, also of $1,000. Thus far, nine young activists have been supported by FFC’s micro-grant program in a variety of social justice efforts.
All of this year’s participants will be encouraged at the kick-off event to design their projects (in response to Part II of the question above) with practicality and feasibility in mind, and to apply for a micro-grant. The five awardees of last year’s micro-grants will be asked to speak about their experiences as organizers of effective public service projects:
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Aishini Thiyagarajan, for a program called "Morning D.E.W.", promoting the creation of kitchen gardens, the produce of which will be sold to buy goods and services for soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
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Andrew Franklin, for a collaborative effort between The Baltimore Station, Glenelg Country School, Baltimore City Master Gardener’s Club, The Goldseeker Foundation and the Parks and People, to construct a sustainable rooftop greenhouse and a garden in a vacant lot near The Baltimore Station, a homeless shelter and recovery/rehabilitation center for former drug addicts.
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Diana Jeang, to promote "Green Trading," a student-run high school-based program inspired by the system of carbon trading. The project recruits student volunteers to calculate the carbon emissions of participating students and the number of trees that would be needed to plant for sequestering this carbon output. Students are then asked to contribute a dollar-for-tree equivalent which is donated to the Arbor Day Foundation, an organization that plants one tree in an American national forest for every dollar it receives in donations.
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Laila Handoo, for her work with the Human Effort for Love and Peace Foundation (H.E.L.P. Foundation) to make a difference in the lives of Kashmiri women and children suffering from the mental illness, hopelessness, and depression that results from the conditions of war. Her work includes opening a dialogue in schools that will increase awareness of the problem of mental illness and reduce the estrangement of suffers from their communities.
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We hope you will participate, and that you will consider joining us at the kick-off event on November 8th.
The contest first challenges students to contemplate a foundational question in the area of interfaith reconciliation and leadership. The initial essay question (2005-2006) was directed toward to the theme of peace in each of the Abrahamic faiths, and the second (2006-2007) addressed the leadership of the founders of those faiths – Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. The third essay question (2007-2008) dealt with the causes and consequences of corruption and the models offered by the Abrahamic faiths for overcoming it. The fourth essay question (2008-2009) asked what can we learn from the values taught by the Abrahamic religions— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—to be responsible stewards of the environment? Prizes for excellence are awarded the writers of essays responding to each year's essay question.
To those students currently engaged in leadership activities or whose potential for leadership manifests itself in those essays, further opportunities are afforded in the form of Youth Leadership Micro-Grants.
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