Earlham Peace Prize recipient Malou Cithiec: Sharing the power of books

Living in Kenya within Kakuma, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, planted the seed for Malou Cithiec ‘28 to give back to his community over the last few years. He has since attended United World College USA and Earlham College, and this spring, his proposal to purchase books for a library at a school in the Kakuma refugee camp received funding as this year’s Earlham Peace Prize recipient. The Earlham Peace Prize is a $10,000 award for a grassroots project funded by the President’s Discretionary Fund that is chosen from the same application process that awards the Projects for Peace grant. 

Books have special meaning inside Kakuma, where the available resources from non-governmental organizations are often devoted to the basic essentials for survival, with next-tier resources like textbooks often only being available for the teachers, if at all. 

“My school was a primary school with over 2,000 children from grade 1 to grade 8,” Cithiec explains. “There were no books. You have to get a notebook, and the teacher would have a book, so they used the books to teach you, and then you’d copy from the teacher’s books in order to be able to read.”

Cithiec expressed clearly how purchasing books with the Earlham Peace Prize funds will create opportunities that offer a ripple effect: greater educational opportunities can offer a lifeline to individuals and their families who are experiencing the precarity and poverty associated with living displaced as refugees.

“Malou’s proposal builds on a project he has been developing for several years,” said O’jeanique Twyman, Earlham’s director of the Center for Social Justice, who leads the campus selection committee. Committee members also include John Wessel-McCoy (career coach for social justice, education, and public affairs); Andrew Gerard-Adie (assistant director of grants and sponsored research); Debanjali Banerjee (assistant professor of computer science); Safia Diarra (instructor of English language learners and international student adviser); and Tsitsi Makufa (Office of Marketing and Communications).

“The fact that the physical structure for his community library is already in place allowed this project to stand out as one poised to make an immediate and meaningful impact on the surrounding community,” Twyman said.

Cithiec himself is a computer science and economics major at Earlham, with an interest in education and developmental economics in the future. He began his work on the library project with a GoFundMe during his high school days at United World College USA, which successfully raised over $1,800 from friends and others in Cithiec’s network. The physical construction of the library was possible even before his Earlham Peace Prize award, and now, the Earlham Peace Award can be used for the textbooks needed to make the library effective.

Cithiec has appreciated the help he’s received in communicating his message; those who have contributed to the library project inspire him, but so do all the people who encourage him to keep doing the hard work of fundraising and raising awareness about the challenges of life there. 

“I’ve learned a lot, from starting to put the idea together and put it on paper, to moving out of my comfort zone to ask people for money — it’s very uncomfortable and not everyone would be willing,” says Cithiec. “My vision is to just contribute as much as I can. I’m not going to change everyone, but I have this vision for the community.”

Story written by Laura Leavitt for the Earlham College Office of Marketing and Communications.

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About Earlham College 

Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion foster a collaborative learning community that inspires and motivates students with transformative opportunities and experiences so they can become catalysts for good in a changing world. Located in Richmond, Indiana, Earlham is one of U.S. News & World Report’s Top 100 national liberal arts colleges and offers one of the top 20 classroom experiences in the nation, according to the Princeton Review.