The Mandela Washington Fellowship Leadership in Public Management Institute at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs provides public management leaders with a six-week program focusing on academic coursework, leadership training, mentoring, networking and professional opportunities.

It is also creating connections impacting Central New York and into African nations as well.

The 25 Mandela Washington Fellows who took part in the institute in June and July at Maxwell are deeply involved in improving their homelands by addressing issues such as peacebuilding, poverty, economic development and hunger.

While in Syracuse, these young leaders learned there are challenges in America as well.

As part of a community service project during their stay in Syracuse, fellows visited All Saints Church, a congregation in the University neighborhood that is home to many African American and African Catholics, as well as University-affiliated students, faculty and staff.

There, Mandela Washington fellows prepared sandwiches to be distributed to the needy. They also met with John Stopher, who, with his wife, Jane, oversees the volunteers who prepare the sandwiches weekly.

Stopher explained to the fellows the nature of the sandwich-making program, along with the challenges of food insecurity in Syracuse. They also spent time with Jane and the team making and bagging sandwiches. Each year the fellows make, bag and box up about 600 of them.

Stopher is appreciative of the contributions of the fellows and the opportunity to talk about hunger challenges in Central New York.

“All Saints Church has been supporting Assumption Church’s lunch/supper program since 1992,” Stopher says. “We currently have about 20 sandwich makers come to the Bishop Harrison Center (on the All Saints campus) every two weeks to make about 1,800 sandwiches.”

He says the church got involved with the Mandela Washington Fellowship program to provide an example of a community support program in the U.S.

“They are a very intelligent group with a lot of thoughtful questions about how such a program might work in their countries,” Stopher relates. “They are also surprised to find that there are a lot of African immigrants attending our church.”

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is also having an impact on hunger abroad.

Adolphe Nyakasane, a 2016 fellow, is a pediatrician in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has seen many children suffering from malnutrition, a big problem in the Central African nation.

While in Syracuse, Nyakasane developed the idea to make cowpea-enriched biscuits to feed needy children. He has returned to Syracuse since his initial fellowship and has spoken at All Saints about the project.

The cowpea, known as a black-eyed pea in the U.S., is an indigenous plant in South Kivu, a Congo province where one out of two children suffer from chronic malnutrition, with one-third never living to adulthood.

It was with these statistics in mind that Nyakasane developed the biscuit made from the protein-rich cowpea.

Through the organization Kesho Congo, the biscuits are distributed to nutritional centers. However, more centers are needed to address what is still an urgent need in the nation.

All Saints is involved in supporting fundraising for Kesho Congo, says Dr. Dale Avers, a professor at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.

“I'm still involved with fundraising for Kesho Congo, primarily through the Syracuse Diocese and their mission program,” she says. “The mission gets assigned to one or two parishes per year and makes a presentation during Mass, asking for donations.”

Avers visited Nyakasane in the Congo.

“I spent two and a half weeks there, which were joyful, strenuous, challenging and heartbreaking,” she says. “The people are amazing—and the hospitality is equal to no other. Truly they give from all they have.”

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by IREX. Syracuse University is a sub-grantee of IREX and has implemented leadership institutes as a part of the fellowship since its inception in 2014. For more information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship, please visit the fellowship’s website.

For additional information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship Leadership Institute at the Maxwell School, contact the Maxwell Mandela Washington Fellowship team at maxwellyali@syr.edu.