Penn team of four undergrads awarded the Davis Projects for Peace grant

Four University of Pennsylvania students in the College of Arts and Sciences have been chosen for a Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace grant for their community health care project in Philadelphia addressing reproductive justice and menstrual equity. The grant provides $10,000 in funds to pursue “innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues” during the summer.

The team members are:

• Annabelle Jin, a third-year student from Moorestown, New Jersey, majoring in biology with a concentration in neurobiology and a minor in English;

• Claire Jun, a third-year student from Birmingham, Alabama, majoring in health and societies with a concentration in health policy and law and minoring in bioethics, chemistry, and Korean;

• Johana Munoz, a second-year student from Philadelphia majoring in psychology with a minor in Latin American and Latinx studies; and

• Destiny Uwawuike, a third-year student from New York City majoring in health and societies with a concentration in race, gender, and health.

Theirs is among 129 projects nominated by 94 partner institutions chosen for the Projects for Peace program this year and is the 17th team from Penn since the award was founded in 2007. The program aims to encourage student initiative, innovation, and entrepreneurship focusing on conflict prevention, resolution, or reconciliation.

The Penn team’s project, Students Organizing for Access to Reproductive Health (SOAR), is an in-person summer internship for Philadelphia high school students. The five-week program will take place at the Penn Women’s Center.

The project grew from Penn Reproductive Justice’s Menstrual Health Education Program. Since 2022, that program has collaborated with Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships to provide 34 workshops to 45 high school students in West Philadelphia. SOAR will recruit 10 students from Philadelphia high schools and equip them with leadership training, advocacy skills, and peer mentorship. Interns will choose an issue to address through service projects. The goal is for the SOAR interns to become reproductive-justice leaders and ambassadors at their schools and to help train the next cohort of youth activists.

Projects for Peace, which may take place anywhere in the world, was founded by philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, who celebrated her 100th birthday by supporting 100 projects, designed “to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace, instead of preparing for war.”

The Penn team applied for the grant with assistance from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.