Three Lehigh students have jointly won a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace award to develop a project in Bududa, Uganda, that provides nutrient-rich eggs to young children, cultivates economic opportunities and fosters connections among the community, schools and healthcare systems. The project aims to help combat malnutrition in that area of the East African country.
The students—Willow Munson ’24, a global studies and pre-med major; Anna Sullivan ’26, a sociology major; and Randi Conroy ’25, a finance major—developed the poultry project in connection with the non-governmental organization Pathways Development Initiative (PDI), which founded the first pre-primary school in Uganda’s Bududa District.
The money will be used to build a poultry house on PDI’s land that will be maintained by older students in PDI’s sports program under the supervision of a chicken maintenance expert. The money also will be used to purchase as many as 500 chickens to provide eggs for the pre-primary school, which serves 3- to 5-year-olds, as well as allow for chicken reproduction and the program’s sustainability.
“The idea is that this can be a fully functioning program without any of our help,” said Munson. “We want there to be enough in the budget to pay people over a long period of time until the chicken farm can be self-sustainable.”