Awel Uwihanganye links Uganda to Concordia

Allison Martens

The first-ever Colors of Concordia scholarship has been awarded to Awel Uwihanganye in recognition of his work to bring cultures together.

The Political Science and Sociology student learned he received the $1,000 award while working in his native Uganda this summer. “It was a great feeling to be recognized for my contribution, however small it still is,” he said.

From March until this month, he was in the poor and civil-war-ravaged East African nation, “working around the clock” to lay groundwork for both the Global Forum on International Cooperation (GFIC), which he founded, and the Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program (CVAP), of which he is a co-founder. CVAP will take its first group of Concordia students to Uganda to work with orphaned and underprivileged children there in conjunction with SOS Children’s Villages early next year.

Founded in 2004, GFIC engages students in development issues through its two national and six university chapters worldwide. From Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, they will host their second annual conference, focusing on African development in H-110 of the Hall Building. Visit www.2006.globalfic.org for more information.

“We all go through life trying to find a purpose for our rather short span on this earth. I am lucky that I have found my calling and the only purpose I was put on this earth for: To try and help those less fortunate in our society and protect the weak,” said Uwihanganye, who graduates next year.

The Colors of Concordia award, named for the famously multiethnic Benetton ads, is the creation of Ramona Senecal, a staff member in the JMSB.

Inspired by the students from around the world she worked with – and dismayed by events surrounding the cancelled speech of former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sept. 2002 – she decided to start an award for students who contributed to cross-cultural understanding and integration.

“I believe in action,” Senecal said. “Words are great, but I wanted to recognize action, and a young person who had the wisdom to realize that we needed meaningful dialogue.”

Three years ago, she started to build the $24,000 endowment required to provide one award each year. To raise funds, she organizes sponsorship for her now nearly 300-member Colors of Concordia bicycle squad, with whom she has participated in the Tour de l’Île de Montréal for the past four years. She has also worked on an annual Teddy Bear adoption drive. CASA Cares, the volunteer arm of the JMSB student organization has been working with her on that, and, this year has decided to donate all the funds from their holiday bake sale to Colors of Concordia.

The award is part of an overall increase in endowment funding at Concordia. According to a report presented last May to the university’s Board of Governors, the value of endowments at Concordia have grown nearly threefold from $888 per full-time student in 1995-96 to $2, 328 in 2004-05.

Senecal plans to spend the next year raising the $8,000 required to complete her endowment. When she received news that a selection committee had chosen the first recipient, she was overjoyed.

“I was overcome that day. It finally hit me that it’s true, Concordia can now recognize young people out there bridging cultural groups.”

For more information, go to www.colorsofconcordia.com