Grinnell College Student Inara Tareque '16 Will Establish Literacy Program With $10,000 Award from Davis Projects for Peace

Grinnell, Iowa -- Grinnell College student Inara Sunan Tareque will implement an international peace project in Bangladesh this summer, thanks to a $10,000 award from the Davis Projects for Peace.

Davis Projects for Peace are funded by internationalist and philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who committed $1 million to fund grassroots projects through a competition on 90 college and university campuses.

Tareque, a first-year student from Bangladesh, will develop a program designed to lift young people out of poverty by improving literacy rates at Chardowani Middle School in Bangladesh. Tareque's project will take a multi-prong approach to the problems of illiteracy and poverty, incorporating the purchase of new computers, the creation of an English and Bengali library, and implementation of a Future Stars Program, a peer evaluation system that rewards students for reading. Tareque's program also will offer Education Empowerment Workshops that encourage students to explore new areas of interest by reading books in the new library. Through the program, Tareque also plans to introduce Internet facilities to the school.

Tareque is the daughter of Jahangir Tareque, a professor at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Rafia Rahman Tareque, a middle-school teacher.

The Davis Projects for Peace are designed to encourage and support motivated college students to create and implement their ideas for building peace throughout the world. Since its founding in 1846, Grinnell has become one of the nation's premier liberal arts colleges, enrolling 1,600 students from all 50 states and from as many international countries. Grinnell's rigorous academic program emphasizes excellence in education for students in the liberal arts; the college offers the B.A. degree in a range of departments across the humanities, arts and sciences. Grinnell has a strong tradition of social responsibility and action, and self-governance and personal responsibility are key components of campus life.

More information about Grinnell College is available at www.grinnell.edu.