Harvard Student Service Projects Awarded $84,250

Four service projects organized by Harvard students won grant money from the Park Street Church’s Social Change Competition, church officials announced last week.

As part of its 200th anniversary celebration, the Boston church set aside $200,000 from its endowment to fund nine student service initiatives, according to Park Street Church Reverend John E. Chung.

A team of Harvard undergraduates, a team of alumni, and two graduate school-affiliated teams were selected as winners, and their grant awards totaled $84,250.

The Social Change Competition sought out proposals that would integrate Christian mission work with “sustainable” projects that would create lasting change, Chung said.

“We really feel that it’s not the money that’s going to change the world,” Chung said. “It’s the passion.”

Harvard Christian Impact, which won $27,950, proposed the creation of a tutoring program that brings together students from Harvard and the University of Pretoria at the Mamelodi Township in South Africa. Former Christian Impact co-coordinator Michael P. Silvestri ’10 said he was inspired to start the program after traveling to South Africa with Christian Impact in the summer of 2007.

The grant money will cover all the program’s costs through the summer of 2011 except for Harvard students’ travel and board expenses, according to Silvestri.

Silvestri said that he and other members of Christian Impact have worked with officers from the Phillips Brooks House Association over the past year to try to make their education project viable in the long term.

“What [Harvard] students have really proven that they can do well is to get into college. Ironically, that is exactly what these students in South Africa need,” said Harvard chaplain Patrick G. McLeod, who works with Christian Impact. “College education is the ticket out.”

A proposal by three recent Harvard alumni to bring new media to the community on the border between China and North Korea was awarded $25,000.

Eric I. Lu ’09, Edward Y. Lee ’08, and June-Ho Kim ’09 said they plan to use the money to buy camera equipment for their project. Kim said that they are planning to look for additional sources of funding for their travel and housing expenses in China.

“We want to teach [the border community] how to use this to not only express themselves and to find a way to think critically, but to think creatively, to ask questions, and to be good storytellers,” Lu said. “One of the things that give people a life is a sense of voice.”

Two teams of Harvard-affiliated graduate students also won grants.

Six graduate students from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School will use $25,000 from the church to start a micro-finance initiative for small entrepreneurs in Kenya.

Park Street Church also awarded $6,300 for a future photography exhibit encouraging missionary work in the Park Street Church community to Harvard Dental School student Hyewon Lee and Harvard Medical School research fellow Leo K. Iwai.

The graduate students could not be reached for comment.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.