If you have never heard of Maria Banda, don’t worry-you have not been living under a rock. But give her a couple more years and she will more likely than not be sharing the global spotlight with people such as Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela and Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Prize Peace winner. Banda is also this year’s recipient of the As Prime Minister Award and has won the prestigious Ontario Rhodes Scholarship, which offers her an opportunity to study at Oxford in England for three years. Of course, Maria Banda will never accept such praises.
“Why would people be interested in me and what I do? If I were a reporter, I would be interested in somebody who actually does something with their life,” says Banda.
But this is exactly why Banda, though she may not like to admit it herself, deserves the public’s attention. Banda devotes much of her time to promoting public good, not just at a community level but an international level as well. She has big ideas about how to increase living standards in Canada, promote economic growth in the Canadian economy, close the gap between the rich and the poor and how to increase peace and security in the global community.
In her award-winning essay title My vision-Canada in the World: Leading the Second Golden Age, Banda shares her vision for Canada. “I believe that our domestic and foreign policies have to work synchronously and symbiotically to [1] increase the living standards of all Canadians, and [2] raise the lot of the world’s poor that will launch a global renaissance. My vision for Canada and the world is of a second Golden Age of sustained and sustainable growth and development.”
Moreover, she writes, “Our vision of a dynamic, growing and sustainable Canada will, however, be a paradise lost if we find ourselves in a Hobbesian world of scarcity, poverty and insecurity. Only greater equality, prosperity and a commitment to global justice can eliminate these root causes of conflict, violence and terrorism. This is not only a moral imperative; it is essential to the security of every member of our global community.
All of this coming from a fourth-year U of T student specializing in the International Relations program is pretty impressive. But Banda is perhaps one of the most modest and humble people you will meet.
“I always have the feeling that I don’t have the right to speak with authority, and I am wary of giving ‘advice.’ It usually ends up being too simplistic or paternalizing,” she says. Regardless of what Banda thinks, her accomplishments speak for themselves.
In her first year of university, Banda joined the G8 Research Group here at U of T and took part in the Genoa Summit of 2001 as a senior analyst. G8 is an annual meeting between eight countries (France, United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia) with a purpose to discuss domestic and international economic and political issues. As a senior analyst of the research group, Banda’s responsibility was to compile a research report to assess whether a country has complied with the G8 objectives. Banda’s research country was Italy.
Banda also became the editor-in-chief of U of T’s international affairs journal The Attaché. The journal comes out twice a year and the “articles range in content from those pondering the continuing impacts of September 11 and the effects of Gulf II on the international system to those analyzing the place of Canada’s cultural policies in the global trade regime.”
Banda adds that one of the goals for the journal is to expand its scope to the international level. She plans to get submissions from writers all over the world. In fact, in the latest issue of The Attaché, Jake Hirsch-Allen, who has worked at the Department of Foreign Affairs and at the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. was one of the contributors to the journal.
What’s more, Banda’s academic record is just as impressive. In high school, her peers named her “most likely be the next Prime Minister of Canada.” In her university application process, she was recognized as the student with the highest average in Ontario (99.7%).
Banda also participates in debating competitions nationally and internationally and has served as the chair of Trinity’s competitive debates committee. She is a steward on the Hart House Board of Stewards at U of T, an academic peer counselor in the International Relations Program and the co-president of the International Relations Society.
With all that under her belt, Banda’s future (and Canada’s, as she proclaims she has no intention of living anywhere but Canada) is surely bright and promising.
