GW Alum Discusses Social Change

The Inspirational Lecture Series made its debut on Wednesday with Justin Zorn, a 2008 GW alum, current Harvard scholar and founder of Banaa.org. Zorn led a discussion about sparking social change in Funger Hall with about twenty people, including GW students and faculty.

“I came to GW without ever really being at the center of a movement before,” said Zorn. His story began in 2004, when he entered GW as a freshman and the Darfur crisis began.

Zorn started a student group on campus and spoke to people who had been in different movements and grass-roots initiatives in DC. He found out that, “U.S. citizenship is the most powerful of all tools,” he said. “You can walk into a congressman’s office and ask them to co-sponsor a piece of legislation.”

The group also wrote op-eds for small local newspapers. “We held some rallies,” said Zorn, “but after all that excitement we realized there’s only so much we can do at 19 years old.”

The group's focus then shifted to targeting GW and former President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg to not provide revenue to the government of Sudan. They were able to get 36 student organizations to have a rally on campus. Zorn and his group got the president’s attention, but it was not what they expected.

“We had a good conversation, but we felt like we lost,” said Zorn. Trachtenberg offered to provide a scholarship to students of Sudan. The group agreed and decided to expand on the idea by creating a program to bring a large number of Sudanese students who can “contemplate what they can add to peace globally,”  Zorn said.

The group created a how-to kit for other campuses to establish the same scholarship program. They were able to get eight schools to provide full scholarships. The group also created a modified Common Application. They received 170 applications, “which totally blew us away,” Zorn said.

There are currently three Banaa scholars, one at GW and two at Rochester University. Makwei Mabioor Deng is the Banaa scholar at GW. He spent 16 years at a refugee camp in Kenya and wrote the first Dinka language textbook for grades 1 to 3. The first half of the book was published in 2009 when he started at GW. The second half was published this year.

“Education is one thing that can bring change,” said Deng, “and this is why this program is very important.”

Even though the Banaa program has experienced some successes, Deng and Zorn were honest about its shortcomings.

“The purpose of this program was to bring all Sudanese together as scholars because there is nothing common among us in Sudan,” said Deng. “We haven’t done as much as we need to, but at least we’ve done as much as we wanted.”

Zorn said the group is trying to keep GW actively engaged in the program and that University has fallen behind in its commitment.

To learn more about Banaa, visit their website.