The Hatchet is celebrating
its 120th birthday
The Young Black Professionals in International Affairs awarded a student with the organization’s inaugural scholarship Thursday night.
The YBPIA executive board selected sophomore Jada Duffus as the recipient of its $1,750 award at the 40th annual Excellence in Student Life Awards Thursday night to go toward her direct costs for the fall semester based on her international service to the African diaspora. YBPIA founder and alum Hannah Jackson — the creator of the award — said the group is the first student organization affiliated with the Elliott School of International Affairs to offer scholarships to students, funded through donations from alumni and local professionals.
“It’s a testament for the representation for young, Black IA students at GW,” Duffus said. “I’m just really honored to be awarded with this award, and the first of awardees, so it’s very exciting.”
YBPIA announced the organization’s inaugural award in February to incoming sophomores, juniors and senior who are committed to elevating voices of the African diaspora within and beyond the GW community. Students could nominate themselves or nominate another student to receive the award.
Duffus said her family is from southeast Nigeria, and they regularly volunteer in rural Nigerian communities that don’t have much government oversight, like working with a nonprofit organization to replace a well and sending school supplies to local students. She said she plans to use the award toward covering her tuition and establishing mentorship programs and wellness workshops with other Black student organizations.
“These initiatives will really address the unique challenges we face, amplify Black voices, and provide tools to navigate predominately white institutions,” Duffus said in a message.
Jackson, a 2023 graduate and a YBPIA mentor, said the purpose of the organization is to create a “pipeline” for people interested in international affairs to enter the field, but leaders recognize that financial burdens and stress may hinder a student’s ability to break into the industry.
“Recognizing a need and putting action behind it is so much of what YBPIA is about, and so much of what this inaugural scholarship is about,” Jackson said.
Jackson said she first mentioned the idea of a scholarship to the YBPIA executive board in 2020, and the award is a culmination of five years of fundraising and donations from alumni and professionals who understand the “niche need” of the organization.
“This is a full circle moment,” Jackson said.
YBPIA President Kyle Balfour said Jackson was “determined” to put out a scholarship for students to fulfill the organization’s mission of helping Black students get internships.
“A big barrier to that can be tuition costs and everything. Students having to work to cover their tuition instead of being able to work and get professional experience,” Balfour said.
Balfour said the organization started with about $500 in YBPIA’s revenue account allocated for the scholarship, which has increased through donations from professionals in the area and alumni over the past four years.
He said throughout the years, the organization was able to develop a five-year plan to provide a $1,750 scholarship to current students while maintaining the organization’s expenses. Money that organizations earn through fundraisers, donations or paying dues go into an organization’s revenue account, which rolls over year to year.
“We have enough funds to cover our own costs, but the whole mission of our organization is to help students within the diaspora,” Balfour said.
Balfour said the organization went through “many hoops and hurdles” to figure out the best avenue to disperse the funds to students. He said the organization ultimately spoke with Dean of Students Colette Coleman, who said the award would be best placed as a student life award.
“I was like, ‘Awesome,’ and obviously we did want to incorporate some aspects of student excellency within GW when proposing this award,” he said.
Balfour said the scholarship is awarded annually in the spring and can only be applied for the following fall semester in the student’s eBill. He said the current executive board centered the criteria for the scholarship around a nominees’ service to the African diaspora on campus and internationally.
“We’re not looking for a student that has to have done like 10 different internships, and they’re studying abroad in a bunch of these different places,” Balfour said. “We’re really looking at a student that has the ability to make impacts wherever they go, whether it’s in their hometown, or it could be serving in a big public service position while being here in D.C.”
Sophia Akwera, a junior and YBPIA’s incoming president, said the organization hosts annual alumni mixers and receives financial support from their parent organization — Black Professionals in International Affairs — in order to allocate money for the scholarship. She said she hopes the organization can acquire more funding to grow the scholarship, but the $1,750 award still “makes a difference” for paying school-related expenses.
“Whether it be in research projects, whether it be in study abroad, just anything that they set out to do in Elliott, I hope that it can help them just to mediate some of that financial burden that comes along with school,” Akwera said.
Adnan Masri contributed reporting.
