2004-2005 Graduate Fellowship on Philanthropy and Human Rights
Recipients:

Zainab Hassan is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute where she is pursuing a Masters in Public Affairs. Of Somali origin, her academic interests center on the impact of the civil war on the Somali community in Minnesota. She advocates for human and civil rights and universal liberties and is actively involved in community issues.

For her fellowship, Zainab is completing a qualitative analysis of the physiological, emotional/behavioral, and financial impacts of the Somali civil war on the community. Through her research, she will identify the most urgent needs of the community and the capacities of the Somali organizations to deal with these issues. In turn, she will share her resources with Otto Bremer and other philanthropic Organizations.

Zainab’s goal is to further her knowledge of human rights, social justice, and philanthropy through her academic studies, seminars, and her fellowship project.

Jody Lovaj is a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at the College of St. Catherine. Jody is Hmong American with an academic interest in promoting and providing youth library services in a multicultural community.

Being part of the second generation of Hmong in the United States, she feels that it is essential to provide hope and leadership for the community. Her fellowship research will be about the recent Hmong refugee resettlement in the Twin Cities. She will be conducting a comparison and identifying best practices of nonprofit agencies servicing the Hmong refugees.

She looks forward to incorporating philanthropy and social justice into her life, professionally and personally, by committing to action and empowering others.

Souwan Thao is a graduate student in the Master of Liberal Studies Program pursuing Human Rights Studies. He also works as a community investigator at Neighborhood Justice Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He immigrated to the United States from a war torn Laos to pursue the human rights field.

For the fellowship research project he wants to do research on how the war traumatize the Hmong people, and what kind of trauma each of them carry with them. He will study the challenges and impacts the war has had on their daily lives.