Warwick Valley High School graduate awarded Princeton in Africa fellowship

WARWICK — Sarah Rawson, a 2009 graduate of Warwick Valley High School and a recent graduate of George Washington University, has been awarded a Princeton in Africa fellowship to travel Africa for her third time since the age of 15.

While at Warwick Valley High School, Rawson served as class president and was an active member of the Student Senate, Drama Club, Interact Club and Youth in Government.

Rawson will leave this August to begin work as a reports officer for the United Nations World Food Program field office in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi.

“I’m really looking forward to learning more about humanitarian assistance in a practical sense and, more specifically, how it relates to health, environmental sustainability, and security,” said Rawson. “Most of all, I can’t wait to live in Lilongwe and connect with the local people and experience the beautiful culture in Malawi.”

2007 in Kenya
Rawson first traveled to Africa in 2007 with a program called Global Routes. That was during the summer between her sophomore and junior year of high school. She spent five weeks volunteering in western Kenya, helping to build a computer lab for a secondary school and living with a host family.

This experience, she said, was her first exposure to international service and was her inspiration to pursue studies and a career dedicated to development in Africa.

2011 in Uganda
In 2011, as an undergraduate student at George Washington University, Rawson returned to East Africa to spend a semester abroad in Uganda. She spent two months in the capital, Kampala, studying community development on a study abroad program managed by School for International Training.

Rawson then spent an additional two months in Gulu, a town in northern Uganda, where she worked with formerly abducted child soldiers of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

There, she used specific participatory theater techniques to research how music, dance, and drama can hasten the reconciliation process among the people affected by the war.

In May, Rawson graduated from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude. She earned a bachelor’s of arts in international affairs with a concentration in international development and a minor in sociocultural anthropology.

She is the daughter of Donna Haley, the director of the MCC Actor Training School in Warwick, and Andrew Rawson of Los Angeles.