Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2019

Orit Barpunu is a small, remote village inNorthern Uganda—one of the most impoverished regions of the country. Within its thatched-roof houses, there is no electricity and no running water; holes in the ground serve as toilets. But outside the newly erected brick walls of Nahla Nursery and PrimarySchool, a small groupof youngsterswearing patterneddresses and brightly colored shirts dances and sings, their voices joyful. And looking on with excitement and pride are Etyang Fred, cofounder and director, and his partner, ShaunaDavidson ’08, who serves as cofounder and board president. Davidson, who graduated from Southwestern as a studio art and anthropology double major and art history minor and went on to earn her master’s in anthropology and international development at the London School of Economics, has helped build the school through fundraising, administrative work, andthecreationofa501(c)(3)nonprofitoverthepast two years. It’s a labor of love for the Southwestern alumna, especially considering that she’s engaged in all these efforts during her off hours: She daylights full-time as a grants and compliance specialist for Educate!, another nonprofit that partners with schools and governments in Africa to better prepare students for careers, entrepreneurship, and community development. “I want to do development work from an anthro- pologist’s perspective,” Davidson says. “A lot of development projects end up failing because they don’t really knowor understandwhat a community actually needs. …My goal—my dream—is to support locally led development because I think the people who live in an area knowwhat’s best for that area.” For Davidson, the “very seeds” of that dreamwere sown in Anthropology of Development, a course she took during her early years at Southwestern that she sees as “a monumental moment” in her career and life. Nahla School is the realization of a vision formany more thanFred andDavidson; it’s the dreamof Obit Barpunu’s children and their families, too. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the village was caught in a violent conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and theUgandangovernment. Children were orphaned during raids that also destroyed their schools, churches, crops, and livestock. Many were forced into refugee camps. Althoughpeacewas restored years later and fractured families were allowedtoreturntotheirhomes,pickingupthepieces amid postwar trauma proved slow and difficult. Before Nahla opened its doors in 2017, children would have to walk two hours to get to the nearest elementary school, and during the rainy season, many could not make the arduous trip because the bridge on the pathwould be impassable. Thosewho did make it to school might then be disappointed to find that untrained teachers had not bothered to show up. A L U M N I S P O T L I G H T Fulfilling the Dreams of Many Shauna Davidson ’08 helps build primary schools and empower children to overcome poverty in Northern Uganda. byMeilee Bridges 32 SOUTHWESTERN