A Voice For the Voiceless

The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.

The Impact of Service



"Speaking with locals and living in a country is the best way to learn about the real lives of citizens, not just the stories in the mainstream media. I will be more critical of what I read as a result of this experience. I also feel even more grateful for my education, and I feel a stronger responsibility to assist others who do not have resources or access to opportunities in their communities."

Maria Skouras (New York University) volunteered in 2011 as a Peace Fellow for eHomemakers in Malaysia.

For more 2011 feedback click here.

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The Fellowship Pr... > Past Fellows > Peace Fellows 2008 > Larissa Hotra and...

Larissa Hotra and Survivor Corps in El Salvador

Larissa “Lari” Maria Hotra is an AP Peace Fellow with Survivor Corps (formerly the Landmine Survivors Network) in El Salvador. She is a first year Master’s student at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. She is concentrating on conflict resolution, with a thematic focus on human rights.

She will be assisting Survivor Corps-El Salvador in implementing an awareness campaign to educate and train institutions and the public on the Disability Rights Convention and the new Salvadoran Disability Rights Laws. She will also help Survivor Corps-El Salvador to create a communications and media strategy, advance the organization’s advertising campaign, and support the organizing of proceedings for a multi-city public march for disability rights, among other initiatives. 

After graduating from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources in 2004, she worked at the nonprofit SafeHouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a legal advocate, advocating on behalf of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. After doing this for a year, she moved to the Windy City (Chicago) to pursue her undergraduate degree in a more international setting. By day, she worked part-time as an environmental science educator to high school students, as well as the Midwest campaign coordinator for Global Impact, a nonprofit that raises money for international humanitarian organizations. By night, she worked as the Political Affairs Editor for a Ukrainian Internet Newsletter, e-POSHTA.  

Throughout her time in Chicago she dabbled in everything that the city had to offer: producing a story for Chicago Public Radio on the Ukrainian diaspora and the city’s infamous taxi drivers; organizing and working with the Ukrainian diaspora through PLAST –a Ukrainian youth scouting organization – as a girl’s counselor, as well as election monitoring in 2004 and community organizing in general; attending as many free cultural and musical events as possible; practicing her Spanish language skills in the various Latino immigrant neighborhoods; and trying to play soccer on every piece of green space in the city.

Larissa is thrilled to be working with Survivor Corps – an organization created for and by survivors. Larissa’s AP fellowship gives her an unparalleled opportunity to use the Survivor Corps model and her skills in human rights advocacy to empower disabled survivors of landmines in post-conflict El Salvador.  She is also looking forward to supporting the organization’s current initiative of becoming an autonomous local NGO.

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