From meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu to teaching disadvantaged children studio art and photography, three alumni of the Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life Student Fellowship program recounted their experiences in South Africa to students and their parents Friday afternoon. The Center organized the event as part of its 10 year anniversary. Founded in 1998, the Center began offering the ECSF program the same year. Sophomores and juniors who are chosen for the fellowship receive a $3,500 stipend to complete a summer internship in the United States or abroad working on social issues. Participants are required to supplement their experience by choosing a related course in the Spring semester and taking a special course with the other fellows the following Fall.

With African fabrics decorating the Atrium of the Abraham Shapiro Academic Center and special colorful seats on the floor, the event also featured a performance by the African Dance Club, African drumming and African music. After the presentations, the Brandeis Playback Society, co-founded by William Chalmus '07, another ECSF alumnus, encouraged audience members to share their emotions and reactions to the event as the Society's members interpreted those feelings in a dramatic fashion.

"I wouldn't be an attorney if it wasn't for going to South Africa [on an ECSF fellowship]," said Brahmy Poologasingham '00, one of the programs first fellows in 1998. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about that trip."

Poologasingham, now a lawyer in Seattle, traveled to South Africa four years after the end of Apartheid during Nelson Mandela's presidency. During her stay in South Africa, she worked with two non-governmental organizations, NOVA and the The National Institute for Public Interest Law and Research (NIPILAR), as well as the Human Rights Commission in Johannesburg, where she met Archbishop Tutu.

With NOVA, Poologasingham worked on a project to improve the environmental conditions in a rural province of South Africa called Mpumalanga. She recalled going into a township that was extremely polluted, and caused children to suffer from asthma and "constant runny noses." To measure the amount of pollution, she described how workers dropped of air calibrators by affected families' homes early in the morning.

Darnisa Amante '06 said her time in South Africa in 2004 "changed [her] life in a way that [she] still hadn't completely understood." She worked at Artist Proof, a studio where artists from disadvantaged areas can train. Today, she works with children at the Score Educational Center in Brooklyn, NY. Amante, who didn't tell her family about her trip until two months before she went, remembered how Johannesburg "looked like downtown Brooklyn," where she lives.

Naomi Safran-Hon '08 presented a slideshow of photos she took while interning at the Art Therapy Center in Johannesburg, working with young AIDS victims. Safran-Hon, a Fine Arts major, said she took advantage of this opportunity to take photos for her project because the Brandeis art department doesn't offer photography classes. After the studio received a donation of Kodak disposable cameras, she encouraged the children to take up photography as well.

"Some of them had never seen reproduction of themselves in their life," she said. Safran-Hon also took pictures in the children's school. "[It's] colorful," she said. "But the color hides.the poverty."

Ariela Alpert '10, who was in the audience, said she planned to apply for the ECFS grant this year. "I really like how [Safran-Hon] integrated art with action and making a difference," she said. "I'm hoping to go to a school like [.] she did, so that was really interesting to see.