Vrindavan lies on the banks of Northern India’s Yamuna River, not far from the site of the Taj Mahal. Believed to be the city where Lord Krishna grew up, Vrindavan is one of the most sacred sites for Hindus, featuring hundreds of temples devoted to Krishna’s worship.

The holy city is also the site of overwhelming poverty and powerlessness for its most vulnerable residents: widows. Known as the City of Widows, Vrindavan has a total population of 57,000, of whom an estimated 15,000 are widows.

“Destitute widows pour into the town, either in observance of centuries-old religious and societal prescriptions or because their families, unwilling or unable to support them, have abandoned them here,” Walter said. “Fewer than one third of the residents have regular work; of those who do, many make less than a dollar a day. The high volume of tourists and pilgrims visiting the town creates a perception of economic opportunity, but a privileged few have already laid claim to the market for visitors’ goods and services, leaving no room for newcomers to secure living incomes.”

Click to view photos Walter took in India

Walter’s project will target Vrindavan’s widows and female immigrants as well as other members of the community who have no viable means of supporting themselves.

“My project is called Vrindaban ka Gaurav, or, Glory of Vrindavan (VKG),” Walter said. “It involves the creation of an artisans’ collective for the production and marketing of poshak, a needlepoint handicraft traditionally made by women in the Vrindavan area. My goals are to help create livelihoods for local people and to create a community surrounding this project in which skills can be developed and ideas can be shared.”

Walter’s work will be supported by a $10,000 grant from philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis’s 100 Projects for Peace initiative, as well as an additional $2,500 from Lewis & Clark. Capitalizing on connections she made with many organizations and nonprofits during previous trips to India, Walter will partner with groups that are already established in the Vrindavan area, such as Friends of Vrindavan and Food for Life Vrindavan. Such collaboration will not only allow her to launch VKG quickly, but will also ensure its continued existence after her visit.

“All of my lodging is being provided for free by people I know in the area, so nearly all grant funding will go toward the project: coordinator and trainers’ wages, training sessions, packaging supplies and initial poshak materials,” Walter said. “It is my hope that this solid foundation for VKG will enable the collective to cover its own operating expenses and employee wages within the first year.”

Walter also recently won a Fulbright Research Grant to study the salience of religious and economic themes in advocating environmental stewardship in Vrindavan.

“It’s clear that Vrindavan has myriad problems, including deforestation, over-development, water security issues, and unemployment,” Walter said. “I know my project won’t be able to help everyone, but I hope VKG can facilitate greater security for those most egregiously affected by these circumstances. Giving widows and poor housewives a source of income will lead to the stability and dignity needed to create an overall environment of peace.”

This slideshow features images Walter took during her travels in India. These photos appear in an exhibition at Pappacino’s coffee shop on Terwilliger through the end of May.  

Early this year, he worked with Kabul Education University to create Afghanistan’s first master’s degree program for teacher education faculty. The first cohort is made up of eleven men and eleven women, all of whom left teaching positions in teacher-training colleges from around the country to earn this unique master’s degree.

Click to view photographs

“Four in five Afghan school teachers and half of university instructors are under-qualified—many are illiterate,” Wahab said. “This program was developed to introduce them to new ways and theories of teaching and learning.”

Like the rest of Afghanistan’s capital city, Wahab said, the university has no regular running water. The city, with a population of 3.5 million people, has no electricity, no garbage collection, and no sewer system. The streets are lined with damaged buildings and garbage. Concrete blast barriers surround every important building such as the Kabul airport, museums, NGO offices, hotels, and government buildings. Military waste, such as exploded trucks and planes, covers the country. It is unsafe to travel with out bodyguards and armed vehicles, Wahab said.

“This is the first master’s degree program in decades in this country,” he said. “Education may save this savaged country; it is hoping against hope—but you have to believe it will make a difference.”

This photo slideshow features images Wahab captured during a recent stay in Afghanistan. He plans to return to Afghanistan in February 2009 to continue teaching in the master’s degree program and continue his work with the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education.

In December, Wahab will share stories about the war in Afghanistan as part of a brown-bag lunch speakers series at Lewis & Clark. His session takes place on Wednesday, December 16 on the graduate school campus.

The students, seniors Casey Nelson and James Cotton and sophomores Betto van Waarden and Claire Battaglia, will establish community programs, communication and reconciliation workshops, facility improvements, and an interactive learning center in the interest of helping Criamar residents overcome the effects of neglect and abuse and become peaceful contributors to society.

With funding from philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis’s 100 Projects for Peace initiative, the group members will draw on their diverse backgrounds, interests, and skills to achieve their goals.

“We came together around this project because it offered an opportunity for all of us to use our knowledge and talent to accomplish the most possible good,” Nelson, a sociology/anthropology and biology double major, said. “We’ll be able to do much more than just donate money—we’ll be working alongside the staff and volunteers and bringing our experiences and education to bear on the problems facing Criamar.”

The group designed its project around providing the most sustainable impact with the time and money at hand. They will use the grant money—$10,000 from 100 Projects for Peace and an additional $2,500 from Lewis & Clark—to purchase computers, educational software, supplementary food, recreation equipment, renovation supplies, landscaping materials, and chickens.

“Each component of our project will generate long-lasting effects within the orphanage,” Battaglia, a political science major, said. “For example, giving the children access to computers will meet immediate needs for additional educational opportunities, but the technological aptitude they gain will also translate into valuable job skills in the future.”

The group also hopes to inspire social change in the community by cultivating connections between the orphans and neighborhood children, in the spirit of fun and recreation.

“It’s critical that the Criamar children get to connect with other kids in their area,” van Waarden, a history major, said. “In all the countries I’ve traveled to, soccer has consistently been a way to connect with people. We think that bringing together children from the orphanage and children from the surrounding community to play soccer will encourage that same kind of bond.”

Now in its second year, the 100 Projects for Peace initiative will allow students to undertake projects in the name of peace in more than 54 countries throughout the world this summer.

“The initiative is the perfect way for Lewis & Clark students to use their liberal arts education, their critical thinking and communication skills, and their creativity to solve problems and promote peace,” Greg Caldwell, associate dean of students and director of International Students and Scholars, said. “Lewis & Clark students want to change the world, and the 100 Projects for Peace initiative gives them a chance to do just that.”

Lewis & Clark students submitted 15 project proposals this year, more than doubling the total last year. Members of the group heading to Brazil argue that even the process of writing a grant proposal increases global awareness on campus.

“This initiative opens up serious discourse on so many levels,” Cotton, a biology major, said. “Students are forced to ask themselves, ‘How do you decide what constitutes the greatest need?’ ‘Where do you think you can make the biggest difference?’ ‘What do you think is the best way to do it?’”

Battaglia and van Waarden hope to continue that discussion when they return to Lewis & Clark in the fall, sharing their lessons in classes and symposia, and advising future program applicants.

UPDATE: Read dispatches from the group’s summer in Brazil and see pictures of Criamar on their blog, Cultivating Peace.

“This vast treasure will enormously enhance the capacity for the research and study of Bill Stafford for writers, students and scholars from around the world,” said President Tom Hochstettler. “He has touched the lives of countless thousands as a writer and a teacher, and this gift will perpetuate his legacy for many future generations.”

Stafford is renowned for his pacifism, his exploration of encounters with nature, and his writings on human kinship. Born and raised in Kansas, Stafford earned a B.A. from the University of Kansas in 1937. While pursuing a master’s degree, he was he was drafted but registered as a conscientious objector. As a registered pacifist, he worked in the Civilian Public Service camps on forest and soil conservation from 1942 to 1946. His commitment to pacifism, nature, and human community would serve as guiding themes in his writing throughout his life.

During his years in camp, he met his life-long companion Dorothy and they were married in 1944. Together they had four children.

He received his M.A. from the University of Kansas in 1947 and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1954. He taught at Lewis & Clark for most of his professional career until retiring in 1980. His first major collection of poetry Traveling Through the Dark was published in 1962, earning him the National Book Award the following year.

A prolific writer, he published more than 50 books in his lifetime and since his death, the Estate of William Stafford has assisted in the publication of 8 more. The Library of Congress appointed Stafford Poet Laureate in 1970. He traveled the world to share his poetry and lead workshops in hundreds of communities from Portland to Bangladesh.

“For William Stafford, the practice of writing and the life of witness were a single project,” said his son Kim Stafford, who has taught at Lewis & Clark for 25 years. “When my father got up before dawn to write, he was beginning his engagement with a world at war. As a writer, teacher, and witness, he sought reconciliation with the self, other people, and the earth. His writing holds out to us the possibility of friendship in all directions.”

As a disciplined daily writer, William Stafford also saved almost everything he wrote, including edits and final versions of his poems. Over the course of 40 years, he accumulated more than 20,000 pages of writings.

“The story of this man’s journey as a father, husband, writer, pacifist, naturalist, teacher and world traveler is laid bare in these papers,” said Paul Merchant, long-term archivist for the Stafford papers. “In some instances we see him wrestle with the words and a poem slowly emerges. Most days, though, you see Bill’s natural gift for poetry, where beautiful poems spill out in journal entries left with barely a correction. It is a sight to behold these papers.”

A number of dissertations and critical studies have appeared on William Stafford’s poetry, and Kim Stafford has written a biography of his father, Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. The library plans to digitize the entire collection over the next two years and make it available online, enhancing scholarly research for historians, writers, and students alike. Doug Erickson, director of Special Collections, said the Stafford Archive is unprecedented in its volume and depth of detail. The collection also includes 90 discs of recordings from William Stafford poetry readings, fine press broadsides, and 15,000 photos he took over the course of his life.