Bard College Students Ixmucane N. Pereira ’26, João Melo ’26, and Moani Moreira-Laliberté ’27 Awarded Davis Projects for Peace Grants

A collage of three photos. Two of the people are smiling, one has a more serious expression.

Bard College students Ixmucane Pereira ’26, João Melo ’26, and Moani Moreira-Laliberté ’27 have been awarded two Projects for Peace Grants for $10,000 by the Davis Foundation. The Davis grants, which are typically conferred to only one project from each partner institution, were awarded in support of two Bard College projects—for Melo and Moreira-Laliberté’s “Pathways of Art” project in Brazil, and for Pereira’s “Worry Dolls: Mayan Indigenous Ways to Remove Worries” project in Guatemala. The Projects for Peace program encourages students to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues.

Pereira’s project will allow children from Brewster, NY, and Guatemala the ability to create their own “Worry Removal Dolls,” also known as Muñequita Quitapenas, tiny figures that are placed beneath one’s pillow at bedtime to remove worries during sleep and dispel nighttime anxiety. Workshops will be conducted in collaboration with the Brewster School District’s Art Department in conjunction with Instituto de Educación Básica por Cooperativa Prof. Edgar Enrique Prado Aldana Aldea Santa Rita—a middle school in Guatemala—and a professional maker of the traditional dolls. Mayan Indigenous families will provide the textiles and materials for the dolls, with purchasing support allocated from this grant, to share their land knowledge to help preserve their culture and alleviate daily stressors. This practice has traditionally helped maintain inner calm or peace while uniting communities during times of conflict.

Melo and Moreira-Laliberté’s project will use the Davis grant to address the lack of access to education and creative opportunities in marginalized communities in Salvador, Brazil, through a partnership with Associação Pleno Cidadão (ASPEC) and Pathways of Art (POA), an organization they founded through Bard’s Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) program. Melo and Moreira-Laliberte will travel to Salvador to design and facilitate percussion and visual arts workshops directly inside ASPEC shelters. The project will provide essential materials and train participants as peer leaders, allowing workshops and tools to remain in use after the students’ departure.