Projects for Peace is a global program that encourages students to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Every year, Projects for Peace awards 125 or more student leaders from over 100 campuses $10,000 grants each to implement a project anywhere in the world over summer break. Projects for Peace was created in 2007 through the generosity of Kathryn W. Davis, and is now hosted at Middlebury College. View the Projects for Peace headquarters website here: https://www.middlebury.edu/projects-for-peace.
Projects
We leave it up to the students to define what a project for peace might be. We hope to encourage creativity and innovation. Projects may be carried out anywhere in the world, including within Hartford and the U.S.
Eligibility
Undergraduate Trinity students (including seniors who would complete their projects after graduation) are eligible. Groups of students from the same or different campuses, as well as individual students, may submit proposals.
Apply
Download the 2025 application here. Applications are due January 15, 2025.
Students are encouraged to review several past successful Trinity Project for Peace proposals at the links at the bottom of this page.
Selection Criteria
Successful applications will address the following questions in the proposal:
Outstanding proposals integrate one or more additional elements, for example: An innovative approach to the issue(s). Appreciation for and sensitivity to the context, communities, and/or cultures where the project takes place. Consideration of the dilemmas, challenges, or conflicts that may underlie the targeted issues or selected approaches. Consideration of sustainability and/or scalability of the approach. Critical self-awareness by the grantee.
Questions
Have a question or want to discuss an idea? Contact Gabby Nelson, Associate Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies, at [email protected].
In August of 2021, Ana Stambolic ’21 and Stanislav Knezevic ’21 hosted a youth conference to foster peace among Southeastern European countries. “Ex-Yu Youth Leadership Conference: Networking for Peace” was held in Belgrade, Serbia.
Over the summer, Trinity Students completed three Projects for Peace. Daniel Santos Ramírez ’23 and Gabriel Sorondo Guirola ’23 completed their project “Proyecto Turpial: Diasporic Youth Encounters,” which focused on building connections between young Venezuelans abroad and helping them to network with the eventual goal of empowering young leaders to give back to Venezuela. Suzanne Carpe Elias ’22 and Federico Cedolini ’22 completed the project “Mental Health Training for Peace: Building an Online Platform to Educate Families of Mental Health Patients in El Salvador,” where the goal was to help educate families with members who are suffering from mental health issues how to better help support their loved ones. Nayantara Ghosh ’22 also completed a Project for Peace over the summer called, “Wonder on Wheels: Bringing Mobile Education to the Children of Daily Wage Laborers and Slum-dwellers,” which focused on providing mobile education to those with inconsistent access to educational services in Bengaluru, India.
This panel event, hosted by the Projects for Peace headquarters at Middlebury College, features Trinity alumna Ana Stambolic ’21. Topics covered include tips for project implementation, reflections on project challenges and successes, how Projects for Peace has impacted panelists’ professional and academic paths, and much more.
In summer 2018, Mariam Avagyan ’18 ran a robotics and coding camp in a war-affected region of Armenia. At the end of the camp, the children were able to send their code to space through the Zero Robotics program. Avagyan hoped to instill in the children that they can dream big by showing them that even though they are growing up in a warzone, they can send a code that they wrote to space.
