Project Pericles Fund of Swarthmore College

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Eugene M. Lang ’38 and the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College created the Swarthmore Project Pericles Fund (PPF) in 2005. The Fund supports groups of Swarthmore students who propose and implement social and civic action projects whose scope and sustainability will advance solutions for the issues in question and also promote recognition of students' motivation and capability to address such major issues effectively. Any team of two or more currently enrolled students may apply for grants of up to $25,000 to fund projects that are visionary in scope and groundbreaking in practice. Projects may have a regional, national, or international focus. Students whose formal proposals are accepted and receive Project Pericles Fund grants are designated Periclean Scholars.

Apply

  • Attend an Impact Gaps Analysis workshop at the Lang Center's CoLab (from 4-5 PM on Sept. 22, Sept. 30, Oct. 8, or October 20). This impact gaps tool will help you prepare your application essays!
  • Project Concept Document due by October 15
  • Concept Pitch scheduled by October 31
  • Submit an Application no later than December 31. Apply for project funding here.

Selection Criteria

  • Vision & Scope: Successful applicant teams will propose to work on a communal, regional, national, or international issue to address the underlying causes and conditions of a specific societal problem.
  • Mission Statement: Successful applicant teams will have crafted an eight-word mission statement that clearly articulates the goals and objectives of the initiative as well as the direct beneficiaries.
  • Team: Successful applicant teams will have at least two student leaders on campus during the life of the grant, preferably from different class years; will articulate the qualifications and unique contributions of each team member; and will commit to completing Training Needs Assessments annually to determine gaps in team composition; and to working with the Periclean Scholar Adviser to identify strategies and opportunities for offsetting those gaps.
  • Well-Defined Objectives & Innovative Strategies: Successful applicant teams will have well-defined, measurable objectives as well as innovative, entrepreneurial problem-solving strategies. These objectives should reflect values of the team such as inclusion, fairness, diversity, democracy, justice, and opportunity. These elements will form the framework of their plan of action.
  • Feasible Work Plan: Successful applicant teams will demonstrate that their plan of action is feasible, that the team possesses or will obtain the necessary skills and experience to do the work, and that a grant from the Project Pericles Fund would enable them to obtain sufficient resources to meet their goals.
  • Evidence of Stakeholder Support: Successful applicant teams will obtain letters of support from others working on this issue or similar issues who endorse the proposed work of and agree to collaborate with the applicant team, exchanging resources, information, and advice as appropriate.
  • Sustainability: Successful applicant teams will outline a general plan to build capacity of the project constituents (human resources) as well as the team’s demonstrated ability to conduct fundraising (financial resources) to sustain the project beyond the term of Project Pericles funding.
  • Social Impact Measurement: Successful applicant teams will outline a general plan to evaluate processes and outcomes of the project.
  • Reflection on Learning: Successful applicant teams will enumerate their individual and group learning goals, as well as how the courses they will take and the project work they plan to do will help to achieve these goals.
  • Faculty Adviser: Successful applicant teams will have identified a faculty member—preferably one whose scholarship and expertise is germane to the project at hand—who will serve as a project adviser. 

Requirements

At least one team member must take PEAC 009 Introduction to Engaged Scholarship (1 credit) and Systems Thinking for Social Change each year of the grant.

Resources

Connecting Campus, Curriculum, & Communities

Based upon the Lang Center's commitment to Engaged Scholarship and ethical intelligence, students who are interested in applying for a grant from the Project Pericles Fund must have taken coursework that is directly relevant to understanding their issue area, unpacking the social problem, and/or designing project elements. In some cases, the project could be developed in the context of the class with the faculty member instructing the course serving as an adviser to the students as the project proposal emerges and comes to fruition. Alternatively, another faculty member—preferably one whose scholarship and expertise is germane to the project at hand—can serve as a project advisor. Students who are named Periclean Scholars and receive grant funding need group members to commit to taking relevant courses throughout the lifetime of the grant.

Note: This project grant is not in service of Swarthmore College and does not create an employment relationship between the student(s) and the College.

Current Grant Recipients

The Lang Center is pleased to announce three Project Pericles Fund grants for the following student social change initiatives:

BarrioEd Project is an initiative of Hannah Londoño Breithaupt ’26, Sofia Cerros Lopez ’27, Zuri Eason ’27 with faculty advisor, Prof. Edwin Mayorga (EDUC). This initiative aims to establish culturally sustaining, youth-centered afterschool sanctuary programs for Latine students in South Philadelphia to help them cope with and challenge systemic inequities in public education.

Little Dragons is a project of Yu-Jing (Laine) Chen ’28, Xi (Perxi) Pu ’27, Xintong Xu ’28, Shuyi (Alice) Zhang ’29, and Zhuoyu (Jamie) Zhang ’27 with faculty advisor Prof. Daifeng He (ECON). Based in the Greater Philadelphia area, this project builds community among local Chinese immigrants to address cultural and generational disconnections. It also supports youth from immigrant families in navigating their identity struggles by bridging Chinese and U.S. mainstream cultures.

Youth for Innocence: The Philly/Pennsylvania Initiative is a project of Bijan Taheri ’28, Elijah Dillow ’27, Elijas Davila ’27, Liliana Zavin ’29, and Nzingha (Angel) Wright ’29  with faculty advisor Prof. Keith Reeves. This project empowers a cohort of youth across Pennsylvania to combat wrongful convictions through direct casework, policy reform initiatives, and awareness-raising events.

Incumbent projects include:

Design FC, led by Lila Travers ’26 and Joseph Eyiolowope ’26 with faculty advisor Prof. Joseph Nelson (EDUC) provides middle and high school students from Chester, PA with a creative space for self-expression through sports apparel design to foster academic success, mentorship, and professional exposure.

Stop the Bleed, led by Allan Di ’29, Daniel Wu ’26, Kayla Nicholas ’26, and Allan Nichols ‘28 with faculty advisor Prof. Lee Smithey (PEAC) has brought evidence-based hemorrhage-control training to teachers and staff of the Chester Upland School District to prepare them to respond to traumatic injuries to teachers and staff.

Thinkers Academy, led by Sylridge Wah ‘27 and Shannel Owusu-Agyei ’28 with Prof. Kathryn Riley (CHEM), provides supports high schoolers in Buchanan, Liberia, seeking to reduce educational gaps and decentralize learning opportunities by combining arts education, digital literacy training, and team-based community projects to foster self-expression and civic engagement.

Past Grant Recipients

View past PPF grant recipients.

PPF Contact

Ashley Henry

Associate Director, Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility

Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility

Contact

  1. Phone: (610) 690-1130
  2. Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility 213

Links

  1. Profile
Photo of Ashley Henry

Design FC

Design FC (DFC) seeks to address the lack of engaging and creative spaces for youth in Chester, PA. More specifically, the project is geared towards middle and high school-aged students from Chester, a predominantly Black community that has been historically disadvantaged by systems of racial and economic injustice. This project offers students a safe and creative space for self-expression and autobiographical storytelling through the design of sports apparel and other creative mediums, with a particular emphasis on addressing systemic barriers to youth involvement in Chester’s flourishing arts scene. In addressing the apparent lack of artistic programming in the Chester Upland School District, our project seeks to unleash the creative and transformative potential of art and design to foster positive performance in the classroom, meaningful relationships between students and mentors, and expose students to industry professionals within the Chester community and beyond.

Design FC website
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Thinkers Academy

In Liberia, secondary education has struggled due to post-war and post-epidemic effects: only 3% of people who attended formal schooling graduate high school, and 4% go on to post-secondary education (Education Policy Data Center (EPDC) 2018). Thinkers’ Academy will target high school students between tenth and twelfth grades in Buchanan, Liberia, where after-school programs are limited in number. Through Thinkers’ Academy, we hope to achieve these goals: 1) Harness the creativity skills of students through arts education and the teaching of digital literacy skills to address these gaps in secondary education in Liberia. 2) Offer students a safe space for self-expression and reflection geared toward promoting collaboration, networking, community engagement, and improving learning outcomes. Finally, our overarching goal is to 3) decentralize educational opportunities in other parts of Liberia that are not Monrovia, where after-school and enrichment programs are clustered and 4) create community-engaged scholars through a digital literacy-based education and inquiry-based learning.

Thinkers Academy