2015 CELEBRATION OF TEN YEARS OF ALI SCHOLARS CELEBRATING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

For Immediate Release:

Louisville, KY (March 26, 2015) – In 2005, the Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of Louisville launched its Muhammad Ali Scholars Program.  It offers a unique two-year experience for undergraduate students at the University of Louisville providing students with an opportunity to engage in a combination of training, research, and service in the areas of social justice, violence prevention and peace building.  The Ali Scholars Program includes leadership training and develops organizing skills.  Ali Scholars build on this training by hosting on-campus events, furthering the work of the Ali Institute and the Ali Center, and working alongside campus, local, national and international practitioners on issues.  An international travel experience explores justice issues in a different cultural, political, social and economic context.

Over the past ten years, Ali Scholars have traveled extensively throughout Africa, Central America, and Europe to countries such as France, England, Senegal, Ghana, Belize, and Rwanda.  Ali Scholars have participated in activities such as visiting Goree Island in Senegal, attending lectures at Universite’ Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, and just last year in Rwanda, delivering supplies to Ndate Yalla Primary School, visiting the Genocide Memorial, and donating books collected in Louisville to the Excel Education Center.  Ali Scholars also engage in dynamic community-based initiatives drawing connections between the social justice issues explored abroad and local issues in the Louisville community.  For example, Ali Scholars hosted a major exhibit on Darfur, Sudan and a lecture by an internationally renowned photojournalist; and in 2007, the Ali Scholars played a key role in planning and implementing Peace and Justice Week by installing a major campus display promoting the Ali Institute’s Do No Harm Campaign.  They created a display of 400 scarves honoring women in Darfur, who suffer from domestic violence.  By 2008, the Do No Harm Campaign was transformed into the See Red Now Campaign, a social justice campaign aimed at acknowledging and addressing the many different ways that violence manifests itself in our communities.

The Muhammad Ali Institute’s 10th Anniversary Celebration aims to celebrate the past with our future student leaders.  It will be held on March 26, 2015 at the Muhammad Ali Center from 5-7 p.m.  All proceeds will benefit scholarships for the Muhammad Ali Scholars.  The event is a commemorative celebration of past Ali Scholars and an acknowledgement of the hard work and dedication of previous Ali Institute leadership and friends of the Ali Institute.  At this event, we also will introduce the 2015-2017 Ali Scholars.