Stéphanie Eller, in the Institute’s Master in Development Studies programme, was awarded a grant for her project “Hip Hop for Peace” by the Davis Projects for Peace initiative created by philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, lnstitute Alumna and long-standing donor. Stéphanie’s project will create a space where the youth of Guatemala City can develop their skills in one of the disciplines of Hip Hop through workshops in July and August 2011. After the two-month period, the group will present its work to potential donors to raise money to obtain a location to keep the project going. Hip Hop for Peace is intended to create a safe space for youth and offer an alternative path away from crime and violence, among other goals. Below Stéphanie writes about how she conceived the project.
Since I was a young teenager, Hip Hop has been my passion. When I started to learn and understand English, I became really fond of the raw underground and politically motivated rap - and I still am on today. Nowadays, because of mass marketing and major record labels that look for "danceable" tunes instead of conscious songs, the Hip Hop culture has acquired a bad reputation of materialism, male chauvinism and consumerism. However, far away from the mainstream industry, real Hip Hop survives and continues to fight for the empowerment of poor (mainly urban but not exclusively) and marginalised populations. This is the kind of Hip Hop I was thinking about when I wrote the project proposal for "Hip Hop for Peace".
Today Hip Hop is a worldwide phenomenon that has seduced youth all over the world. Before beginning grad school, I worked for three months for the Direction of Security on the City Council of Bogota, Colombia, in the section working on youth at risk and gangs. My work included cooperation with community based organisations. Among them, a couple of organisations working with youth in some of the most violent and excluded sections of the city were using the Hip Hop culture in their daily activities. I saw some great results but I was enraged at the attitude of officials towards this Hip Hop influenced youth. I was asked to investigate Hip Hop culture to answer the question my superiors were asking, namely: is Hip Hop an artistic or a criminal culture? Regardless of the results of my study, the attitude towards these youth remained one of mistrust. Since then, I have always wanted to carry out a project for youth using Hip Hop as a means of socio-political mobilisation.
When I decided to seize the opportunity of the Davis Projects for Peace to submit a proposal, I chose to implement it in Guatemala for different reasons. First of all, I know the country quite well. Before going to Colombia, I worked as an intern at the Swiss Embassy in Guatemala City for four months. Through my work, I had good insights into the scourges the country faced in terms of violence, maras, and drug trafficking. What still surprises me is that despite its high level of violence, very few people know about the situation of Guatemala. It is a forgotten crisis. In Central America, Mexico is catching all the media coverage because of the highly publicised ongoing cartel war. However, the situation in Guatemala is also dire. The country’s people are constantly in fear. Therefore, I decided that Guatemala would be a perfect place to carry out the project. On top of that, while I was there, I befriended Renata Avila, a brilliant human rights lawyer to whom I transmitted my passion for Hip Hop and who decided to jump on board with the project. Many others around me also believe in it and are helping to expand the project.
More information on Hip Hop for Peace (PDF).
Stéphanie Eller is from Lausanne, Switzerland. She is in the last semester of the Master in Development Studies programme at the Institute focusing on conflict and development. During the semester she carried out field research in New York on gentrification for her master’s thesis. She holds Bachelor in Political Science from the University of Lausanne.
Davis Projects for Peace, in its fifth year, provides grants to university students from nearly 100 institutions who collectively receive over USD 1 million in funding for projects in all regions of the world. Mrs Kathryn Davis launched the programme on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007.
Mrs Davis obtained her PhD from the Institute in 1934, in the same year as her late husband, Shelby Cullom Davis, former United States Ambassador to Switzerland from 1969 to 1975. Each year since 2007 she has also financed four PhD scholarships, each for four years. In addition to these donations, Mrs Davis made a large contribution for the construction of the “Campus de la Paix”.
Ms Evelyne Tauchnitz, PhD student in International Studies at the Institute, was awarded a grant through Davis Projects for Peace in 2010 for “Theatre for Peace”.
Further information about Kathryn W. Davis and her Projects for Peace initiative can be found in the spring 2009 edition of Globe.