THIS SUMMER’S PEACE AND GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP INTERNS TRAVEL
TO ASIA, EASTERN EUROPE, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA AND PARTS
OF THE U.S.
A Hanover, Pennsylvania student will be traveling
far from home this summer in an effort to help stop the spread
of AIDS in South Africa. Claire Fawcett, a first-year student
at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, will spend 10 weeks in
South Africa working on a project whose goal is to reduce the
risk of HIV transmission through educating South African adolescents
about safe sex, self-esteem, and abstinence.
In the aftermath of the transition
from the apartheid government to a democracy, South Africa continues
to struggle with inequality, particularly when it comes to education.
As Fawcett explains, “Lack of education and economic strife
can perpetuate both the rampant spread of AIDS and the faulty
democracy.” It is this link between the AIDS epidemic
and the difficulties of democracy that Fawcett plans on researching.
Fawcett will be involved with
the South African Health Promotion Project, funded by the National
Institute of Health. She plans on working as an English-speaking
facilitator, teaching eight-grade Mdantsane students about HIV
transmission and prevention. When needed, she will also help
process data for the Health Promotion Project. “The knowledge
that I give to the students hopefully will enable them to refuse
sex and insist on protection,” Fawcett says. “Perhaps
these students’ education can contribute, in a small way,
to the eradication of a world-wide epidemic.”
Fawcett will travel to East
London, South Africa under the auspices of Haverford College’s
Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. She is one of 12 students
who received internship stipends from the Center, allowing them
to work on projects in the U.S. or abroad in areas related to
peace making and peace building, as well as to social, political
and economic and governmental challenges. This summer’s
interns will travel to Mexico, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Chile, India
and Pakistan as well as to projects in Michigan and Nevada.
