Benjamin Bechtolsheim ’09 awarded $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant

Bechtolsheim will work with Ugandan reproductive health organization this summer

Benjamin Bechtolsheim ’09

The International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life is pleased to announce that Benjamin Bechtolsheim ’09 has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Davis Projects for Peace for a project in Northern Uganda, the site of a 20-year civil war that has resulted in massive population displacement.

Bechtolsheim will work this summer with Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU), a locally based and run NGO, to support displaced women with HIV/AIDS and survivors of gender-based violence living in resettlement villages in Northern Uganda. The project aims to improve the medical and laboratory capacity of RHU and to train group leaders in the villages to guide support groups and education councils.

“Benjamin Bechtolsheim is seeking to help the refugees in rural Uganda to build sustainable peace in this region ravaged by an ongoing civil war, by addressing the tremendously destructive ongoing effects of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS,” said Marci McPhee, associate director of the Ethics Center. “This project has a very strong likelihood to make a real difference in this conflict-torn region.”

As a recipient of a 2008 Ethics Center Student Fellowship (now called the Sorensen Fellowship), Bechtolsheim last year worked with RHU to help internally displaced persons as they transition from camps to permanent housing.

In its third year, Davis Projects for Peace honors philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who launched the initiative on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007. Designed to encourage and support motivated youth to create and implement their ideas for building peace throughout the world in the 21st century, the program funds 100 projects a year for a total of $1 million. For more information, visit the Davis Projects for Peace Web site.