Schwartz Fellow Lakeysha Graças de Deus reflects on work in Angola

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When Penn State alumna Lakeysha Graças de Deus thinks about education in Angola, the issue has always been personal, she said. Around her family’s dinner table, her mother once declared, “Estamos a criar pessoas mutiladas” (“We are creating mutilated people”). The words captured how Angola’s fragile school system often leaves students at a disadvantage from the very beginning, sometimes forced to use their laps as desks or to study in classrooms held under trees, said Graças de Deus.

Her parents’ stories of growing up during colonization and civil war gave those conversations even more weight, she said. Education, they taught her, was the way forward. Growing up, she moved back and forth between Angola and the United States, an experience that sharpened her awareness of the stark differences in opportunity and access.

“In developing countries, education is the way people get out of poverty and succeed,” she said.

Graças de Deus graduated magna cum laude from Penn State in December 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in criminology, legal studies focus, and minors in economics and sociology. She was selected as the College of the Liberal Arts’ 2024 Rhea S. Schwartz Fellow, a distinction that allowed her to spend the past year addressing barriers to education in her home country.

The Schwartz Fellows Program provides up to $45,000 annually to one graduating student in the college to support a yearlong, postbaccalaureate service project anywhere in the world. It was established in 2021 by Rhea Schwartz, a 1971 graduate in French and Francophone studies, and her late husband, Paul Wolff.

Graças de Deus will share her story at the annual Schwartz Fellow Symposium on Oct. 10, 3:00–4:30 p.m., in 134 HUB-Robeson Center.

Back to Angola

Graças de Deus was encouraged to apply by her friend, 2023 Schwartz Fellow Amelia Dodoo, who asked her what social issue she would most want to tackle. The answer came easily: education in Angola, said Graças de Deus.

Her fellowship project, “Estamos a criar pessoas mutiladas: a case study of education in primary schools in Angola,” took her across the provinces of Zaire and Kwanza Sul. Over 10 months, she visited a dozen schools, observing classrooms, interviewing teachers and families, and listening to students share their struggles and aspirations.

One of her most memorable experiences came early, she said, when the provincial director of education invited her to a student-led science fair. Students from public primary schools, private secondary schools and a local petroleum institute presented projects on oil refining, diamond mining and conservation, each offering proposals for mitigating environmental damage.

“It showed exactly what I want in Angola — more innovation from the younger generation,” she said. “It was truly inspirational.”

Graças de Deus also launched projects to improve schools directly. At two rural schools, workers repaired ceilings, replaced rusted iron supports, repainted classrooms, installed new chalkboards and purchased teaching materials.

Her efforts expanded into communities across Kwanza Sul province, where she helped pave classroom floors, add doors and windows, and restore bathrooms with new toilets, tiled walls and stall doors. Each project concluded with the delivery of educational supplies to ensure the renovated spaces were ready for students and teachers, she said.

“The emotional toll was the hardest part,” she said. “One school’s yard was so flooded with rainwater that mold had begun to grow, and we had to jump from rocks just to reach the classrooms. At another, there were no working bathrooms, so children had to go in the bushes.”

“It was heartbreaking to witness,” she added. “While some progress is happening, many schools and communities are still being left behind even as the country itself grows wealthier.”

Next chapters

For Graças de Deus, the fellowship was both eye-opening and career-defining, she said.

“Being a Schwartz Fellow felt like such a gift," she said. "It gave me the chance to do meaningful research, to support communities, and to start building the kind of future I’ve always dreamed about.”

While she once planned to pursue criminal law, she said, she is now a first-year student at Georgetown Law, focusing on international trade and development.

“It feels like a full-circle moment, knowing that Rhea Schwartz is a Georgetown Law alumna,” she said. “The fellowship sparked a new passion for international trade and showed me how my background in criminology and economics connects to real-world systems.”

She said she plans to return home one day to open a primary school that offers the kinds of opportunities she once had at an international school in Luanda. More than anything, she wants to serve as the role model she herself once needed.

“I want to be someone little Lakeysha could look up to,” she said.

She said she also wants her research to encourage more young people in Angola to view education as a way to build futures at home rather than only as a pathway abroad. “What I envision is an education system that gives students more than skills,” she said. “I want it to give them hope.”

Schwartz Fellows

Applications to be the next Schwartz Fellow are being accepted through Feb. 1, 2026. Interested students should visit the Schwartz Fellows website.