WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009 - (Page 42)

Community News RECENT AChIEVEMENTS OF OUR COMMUNITY by JoAnna Haugen AFGhANISTAN louise Pascale (66-68) is reintroducing music to Afghanistan through The Afghan Children’s Songbook Project. The songs, collected initially by Pascale while she was in the Peace Corps, were almost completely eradicated due to the war and oppressive rule of the Taliban. With the help of an Afghan-Canadian composer and performer and an Afghan graphic designer and printer, she has recreated her old songbook of 16 songs, which now has an accompanying CD and cassette tape of Afghan children singing all the songs. The books are distributed to children in elementary schools, orphanages and women’s centers with the help of a number of organizations, including Save the Children, Youth Educational Services, HOPE International, Afghan Women’s Organization and the American Friendship Foundation. BELIZE Ken Foster (8184), a professor of agricultural economics, was recently appointed head of Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Ken Foster Economics. Foster specializes in production economics and the marketing of livestock products and has been a faculty member at Purdue since 1990. BURKINA FASO, SOUTh KOREA The Burkina Faso government has awarded lawrence diggs (South Korea 79, Burkina Faso 79-81) with the Fireman’s Medal of Honor with 2 Summer 2009 a gold star. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Diggs used his experience as a paramedic to conduct an ambulance service training. He lawrence diggs helped organize and train Burkina Faso’s first ambulance service, a component of the Burkina National Fire Brigade which had 40 men at the time; today more than 1,000 men and women are involved in the program. CAMEROON nicole Sheldon-desjardins (0305) is the founder of the Boston International Women’s Day Film Festival. The festival (now in its second year) was held in early March this year. Twenty films were screened in Boston and Cambridge with the underlying theme of honoring the remarkable trials, tribulations and triumphs of women around the world. Sheldon-Desjardins is a director of programs and education at Hostelling International. ChAD Steve Howard (76) is the director of Ohio University’s Institute for the African Child, the only one of its kind in the world. The institute is an integral part of the international studies program on campus and encourages a holistic approach to the understanding of children in Africa by promoting research and advocacy. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC On March 15, 2009, geologist-turnedteacher Joseph acaba, became the first person of Puerto Rican descent—and the second person with a Peace Corps connection—to go into space. (Former Peace Corps Medical Officer Mae Jemison was the first.) Among the things he brought with him: a Peace Corps flag. Acaba served as a Peace Corps volunteer during the 1990s in the Dominican Republic, NASA picked him as an educator astronaut in 2004. He made two spacewalks on this, his first spaceflight. EThIOPIA Carol Beddo’s (64-66) memoir essay Choices Rejected was published in Best Travel Writing 2009, a collection of travel essays published by Traveler’s Tales. The essay is a chapter from a book she is writing about her Peace Corps service in Ethiopia. ThE GAMBIA Robert Williams (The Gambia 8789), a math teacher at Colony High School in Palmer in the MatanuskaSusitna Borough School District, has been named 2009 Alaska Teacher of the Year. Williams has taught for 21 years, but got his start as a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching high school mathmatics in Basse, The Gambia. After his Peace Corps service he entered the Peace Corps Fellows program at Columbia University and taught in New York City schools before returning to Alaska. In Bob Williams

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009

WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009
Contents
More Peace Corps Campaign: Better and Bolder!
Africa Rural Connect
Readers Write
You Too Can Be Bill Gates
Taking Peace Corps Back into the Field
Come for the Information, Stay for the Dancing
A “Green” Community Rising
Microfinance Pioneer Receives 2009 Shriver Award
The Colombia Project
A Voice for the Unheard
Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Microfinance Podcasts
Selected Microfinance Resources
Bicycle! Bamenda! Orange!
Luck and Fame
A Step in the Right Direction
Bringing What She Loves
Letter from Botswana: First Tongues of the Kalahari
Letter from Tanzania: Homo Sapien in Africa
In the Beginning (There Was John)
The Peace Corps Community Making a Difference
Community News
Advertiser Index

WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009

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