Three Students Awarded 2026 Projects for Peace Grants
Three Middlebury students have been awarded 2026 Projects for Peace grants to implement community-centered projects, each addressing a distinct challenge: unifying disparate ethnic groups, bridging a rural-urban divide, and empowering youth to address the environmental impacts of overtourism.
The Middlebury winners were among more than 125 students nationwide who received awards based on nominations from 93 partner institutions. Each student receives $10,000 to implement a project, typically between May and August, focused on innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues.
“Our Middlebury selection committee was impressed by the students’ ability to seamlessly integrate their personal interests and academic pursuits—fostering peace through thoughtfully designed youth engagement initiatives focused on sustainability, urban-rural connection, and sport for development,” said Heather Neuwirth Lovejoy ’08, Middlebury’s Projects for Peace liaison and director of the Elizabeth Hackett Robinson ’84 Innovation Hub. “We are thrilled to launch their postgrad journeys with this transformative Projects for Peace experience.”
Projects for Peace was founded by Kathryn W. Davis, who celebrated her 100th birthday by supporting 100 Projects for Peace, designed to “bring about a mindset of preparing for peace, instead of preparing for war.” Since its founding in 2007, Projects for Peace has funded more than 2,300 projects, often working from criteria specific to each institution’s priorities.
Following are descriptions of the projects:
Alem Hadzic ’26
Bridging Communities Through Sport in Prozor-Rama
Prozor-Rama, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Alem Hadzic ’26 sees his project to bridge ethnic divisions in Prozor-Rama through sport as an extension of his peacebuilding work at Middlebury. In May 2025, he led a running-based fundraising initiative with the Red Cross of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, raising more than $8,300 for vulnerable communities. The following summer, he interned with the Red Cross, where he saw firsthand how the funds supported families in need.
“That experience was deeply personal and transformative and showed me that combining sport with intentional storytelling can mobilize communities around shared care,” said Hadzic. “These experiences have solidified my commitment to using sport as a vehicle for solidarity, compassion, and the collective good.”
The son of refugees from Prozor-Rama who came to the United States during the Bosnian War, Hadzic developed his project to give back to the community integral to his family’s history. Long after the war, divisions persist, and his project brings Bosniak and Croatian youth together through workshops blending sports, dialogue, and skill building.
“Using soccer, basketball, volleyball, and rowing, mixed-ethnicity teams will work together toward shared goals, encouraging positive interaction, joy, and lasting friendships,” says Hadzic, who will also lead guided reflections with influencers and athletes to foster connection and shared understanding. “If the youth grow up playing together, celebrating together, and supporting one another, that becomes the groundwork for a more unified future.”
Hadzic credits his experiences as a student-athlete, researcher, and community volunteer as reinforcing his belief that leadership means creating environments where people feel seen, valued, and connected, regardless of societal difference. “Projects for Peace has given me the opportunity to apply those lessons in a place that is of significant value to me,” he says.
Ahmed Awadallah ’26
Mustaqbal: Bridging Egypt’s Urban-Rural Divide Through Education and Dialogue Initiative
Multiple locations in Egypt
Having grown up first in a small Egyptian village and later in metropolitan Cairo, Ahmed Awadallah ’26 has long been fascinated by the cultural divide between rural and urban communities. His project, Mustaqbal (“future” in Arabic), aims to bridge the gap between al-aryaf (rural) and al-amaar (urban) through three pillars: reducing harmful stereotypes, promoting equity, and equipping youth and their mentors with tools to guide their communities toward understanding rather than division.
“Living in both rural and urban spaces allowed me to see that the divide between them is not about hostility,” says Awadallah. “It is about distance, misunderstanding, and unequal access to opportunity. I saw how young people in villages were often viewed as less capable, while city youth were seen as disconnected from tradition. Those assumptions quietly shape futures.”
For many young people in Egypt’s villages, educational opportunities that shape their future remain out of reach, says Awadallah. He adds that generational stereotypes, unequal resources, and restrictive cultural norms deepen the rural-urban divide and, without intervention, risk hardening into cycles of conflict across generations.
“Mustaqbal is designed to interrupt that pattern in a structured and lasting way,” he says. “Through dialogue workshops rooted in shared cultural values, rural and urban students will sit together, tell their stories, and confront misconceptions directly. Through immersive exchanges, they will step into one another’s daily lives, reflect on what they learn, and reconnect through a shared national history.”
Awadallah credits his time at Middlebury with helping transform his lived experience into a project by challenging him to consider sustainability, partnerships, and accountability. “This project is personal because I have seen what happens when silence continues,” he says. “I have also seen what happens when people sit down and truly listen. Mustaqbal is my effort to build that listening into something that lasts.”
Sam Wemmer ’26
Bali Environmental Peacebuilding Initiative
Bali, Indonesia
Sam Wemmer’s project addresses what he considers one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: the environmental burden of overtourism. “As citizens of wealthy developed nations visit countries with well-preserved areas of natural beauty, the environment suffers disproportionately due to the actions of those outside of the community,” says Wemmer.
In Bali, Indonesia, for example, overtourism is fueling social tensions among residents, tourists, and local industries through hotel development, pollution, and disrespectful behavior by visitors. Native Balinese communities are caught in the middle, Wemmer says, navigating the competing pressures of earning a living from tourism while preserving their culture and environment.
Wemmer plans to implement a 10-week program, the Bali Environmental Peacebuilding Initiative (BEPI), to train 10–15 Balinese students ages 15–18 to document and respond to environmental degradation. In addition to taking part in workshops and mentorship, participants will receive seed grants to continue their efforts in their hometowns and beyond. Students will be selected from areas facing challenges such as groundwater contamination, irrigation conflicts, overfishing, and mangrove loss linked to the Benoa Bay tourism development.
Participants will rotate through workshops led by Balinese journalists, artists, and environmental NGOs. “BEPI will equip young leaders to transform environmental conflicts into opportunities for collaboration, dialogue, and peace,” says Wemmer, who spent the summer before arriving at Middlebury in Yogyakarta through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program. An aspiring marine biologist, he returned to Indonesia the following summer to interview local researchers incorporating ethnobiology into their work.
“I want to use my grant to provide these students—the forthcoming generation of conservationists, journalists, writers, and artists—with resources to respond to this growing conflict,” says Wemmer. “By connecting them with educators and professionals with experience in environmental conflict transformation, the project will strengthen local autonomy to respond to the influence of the tourist industry, and open up dialogue in a host of communities when the students return to develop their independent projects.”