News Release

First Prize in National Peace Essay Contest Awarded to New York High School Student

June 25, 2004

Vivek Viswanathan (left), first-place winner from New York, is presented with his award from U.S. Institute of Peace president Richard H. Solomon.

WASHINGTON—Vivek Viswanathan of New Hyde Park, N.Y. was awarded first prize in this year's National Peace Essay Contest (NPEC), sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace. A student at Herricks High School, Viswanathan received a $10,000 college scholarship for his essay titled "Establishing Peaceful and Stable Postwar Societies Through Effective Rebuilding Strategy." In announcing the winner at the Institute's annual NPEC awards banquet on June 23, Institute president Richard H. Solomon commented on the high caliber of all the essays, noting that their authors "are already extraordinary ambassadors of peace."

David Leimbach of Jenks High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma was awarded a $5,000 scholarship for his second-place essay on "Attempts at Sustainable Progress Following Conflict: East Timor and Cambodia." Kevin Schaeffer, a student at the Canterbury School in Fort Wayne, Indiana won the third-place award of $2,500 toward his post-secondary education for his essay on "Political Reconstruction: Planting Democracy and Stability for the Next Generation."

More than 1,000 students from American high schools across the United States and in U.S. territories and abroad participated in this year's contest, writing on the topic of rebuilding societies after conflict. In his essay, Viswanathan drew upon the 1947 U.S. Marshall Plan for post-World War II Europe as a successful example of post-war reconstruction and Somalia of the early 1990s as an unsuccessful model. He argued that to be effective, reconstruction efforts should be tailored to the specific post-war situation, obtain a large commitment of resources and assistance from the international community, and involve "a nation's own people in a way that allows them to ultimately control their destiny and that eventually provides a clear exit strategy for international actors."

Viswanathan, Leimbach, and Schaeffer joined the other 49 state-level winners in Washington, D.C. from June 19 through June 24 for an Institute of Peace program that introduced them to senior U.S. government and foreign embassy officials, members of Congress, and other experts involved in the making of American foreign policy. They assumed the roles of diplomats, government officials, and members of the international community in a special three-day problem solving simulation focusing on the conflict in Sudan. The purpose of the exercise was to encourage the participants to closely examine the process of post-conflict reconstruction.

You can follow Viswanathan and the other winners on their unique learning adventure in Washington, D.C. on the Institute's web site at www.usip.org.

Additional Online Resources

• More on the National Peace Essay Contest
• More on the Washington Award Week

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe.