Friedman '07 gets Labouisse Prize

While her fellow seniors begin consulting jobs and pursue graduate degrees next year, Maital Friedman '07 will be living in Mbale, Uganda, working to provide textbooks to children in the surrounding villages.

Funding for Friedman's efforts comes after the University awarded her the Henry Richardson Labouisse '26 Prize, a $25,000 fellowship that helps graduates pursue public service projects in developing countries. She is a religion major and will also earn a certificate in African Studies.

This will be Friedman's second trip to Mbale. In the summer of 2005, with funding from the University and the Foundation for Sustainable Development, she helped found a textbook library there. Her upcoming work will seek to improve the library by expanding it and moving it to a more convenient location.

"One of the issues is lack of resources," Friedman said. She added that she started the library to house textbooks and serve as an educational resource for students but noted that it is still "very, very small," with only about 200 textbooks.

Another difficulty, she said, is that the library is 15 miles from the local school, making it inconvenient for students to take advantage of the newly available materials.

"I've proposed to move the library to town, where it can be easily accessed by high school students throughout the community," Friedman said. She added that the new location would make it more centrally located for students in several surrounding villages.

"The idea is to make it more of an educational resource center," she said.

Upon arriving in Mbale this summer, Friedman plans to speak to school principals, administrators and students to figure out a way to partner with them.

"I think the first few months [of my time in Uganda] will entail establishing relationships and getting feedback from the community," she said.

Friedman said she was inspired to work in Africa after she traveled to Israel during the summer of 2004, where she spoke at length with a peer who had done development work in Kenya.

Irit Rasooly '07, who sits on the Human Values Forum with Friedman and who traveled on service trips with her to Uruguay and West Virginia, said Friedman has a deep interest in social justice.

"Whenever you are around her, these social justice issues come up," Rasooly said. "She talks not only about her work, but about the ethical implications. She has antennas out for these big issues and questions."

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Rasooly also noted that Friedman connects her class work to her volunteer efforts. Friedman is writing her senior thesis about Christian missionaries in Africa, focusing her first chapter on the history of Christian women in Africa.

Friedman's work in Africa has also tied into her broader interest in religious issues, she said. Friedman, a religious Jew, visited fellow Jews in Uganda. She said that the non-Jewish Ugandans she met — as well members of the Christian charity organization she worked with there — were respectful of her religion.

"They were concerned that I didn't believe in Jesus," Friedman said of the Ugandans, adding that she never felt discriminated against. "It was very interesting how open they were."

Though Friedman said she is unsure what she will do after completing her second stint in Uganda, she is considering pursuing a master's degree in international development.

"Hopefully this [trip] will inform what I want to do next," she said.