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National Peace Corps Association > News > Community News > Botswana, Cameroon, Micronesia, India, Korea, Lesotho, Malta, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Tunisia, The Gambia
Botswana, Cameroon, Micronesia, India, Korea, Lesotho, Malta, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Tunisia, The Gambia
By JoAnna Haugen on Friday, January 7th, 2011
BOTSWANA
Berry College professor Sandra Meek (89-91) has been awarded a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for her poetry. She has been granted a sabbatical during fall 2011 to finish her fifth book, An Ecology of Elsewhere. Her fourth book, Road Scatter, is currently being published by Persea Books. Meek is also the author of Biogeography (winner of the 2006 Dorset Prize), Burn and Nomadic Foundations. She has her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Colorado State University and her doctoral degree from the University of Denver.
CAMEROON
President Barack Obama recently appointed Pamela White (71-73) as the U.S. ambassador to The Republic of the Gambia. White has worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development since 1978 in a number of countries including Burkina Faso, Senegal, Egypt, Mali, Tanzania, Liberia and South Africa. From 1999-2001, she served as USAID’s deputy director for East Africa.
FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition recently appointed Katharine Kreis to the position of director of policy and advocacy, which she will assume in February 2011. Kreis has been working for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where she was instrumental in designing and implementing the Foundation’s nutrition strategy. Prior to that position, she served in the U.S. Foreign Service and worked for several non-governmental organizations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the United States Agency for International Development. Kreis is a member of the Board of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Nutrition. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan.
INDIA
John Howard (65-67) has a passion for eco-friendly living. His home is made of recycled material such as lumber from his previous house, transoms from Mount Holyoke College that are now leaded glass windows and old library bookshelves that are being used as kitchen cabinets. Howard’s home also has a solar electric system. A former employee of the Mount Holyoke College theater department, where he was in charge of building sets and lighting, Howard is now retired.
KOREA
David L. Meth recently published his first novel, A Hint of Light, which chronicles the life of a black Korean (or Amerasian) who has lived on the streets of Seoul since his birth. Meth is also the author of the play 9/12, which was awarded the 2008 Peace Writing International Award and To the Death of My Own Family, which won a 2009 Connecticut Playwrights Fellowship. He is working on his second novel. Meth teaches at the US-Japan Language and Culture Institute in Greenwich, Conn., which he founded with his wife several years ago.
LESOTHO
Lisa M. Cover (89-91) was awarded a Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science & Mathematics. Presented annually by the Fund for the City of New York and sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the award comes with a $5,000 prize. Cover works for the Morris Academy of Collaborative Studies in the Bronx. She also teaches personal finance and geometry to low income and generally low achieving populations.
MALTA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, SOMALIA, TUNISIA
John Roberts (Somalia 64-66) worked for the Foreign Service for many years with posts in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malawi, Kenya, Egypt, Dominican Republic, Botswana, Liberia, Madagascar, Ukraine and South Africa. He retired from the State Department in 1993, rejoined the Peace Corps, then took a job at Colorado State University in 1998, where he taught courses in international studies. Roberts recently started a museum called Our Global Village, where his collections of fine and folk art from his travels are displayed.
NEPAL
Former World Bank staffer Mel Goldman (66-69) is now a New York wine producer. His award-winning Keuka Lake Vineyards have received local and national recognition for its European-style wines, including the only North American medal awarded to a dry Riesling at the Riesling du Monde competition in Alsace, France, for its 2008 Goldman Vineyard Dry Riesling. The vineyard’s 2009 Semi-Dry Riesling was judged Best Riesling and Best White Wine in the New York Wine & Food Classic.
NEPAL
Daniel J. Miller (74-78) has spent the last four-and-a-half years working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in India and recently transferred to USAID/Philippines, where he will be the chief of the Office of Economic Growth. Miller recently published a book, Snow Peaks, Black Tents: Journeys Among Nomads, about his work with nomads in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau.
NIGER
Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak (83-85) has taken eleven trips to Haiti in the past four years. She works with Farmer to Farmer and helps teach Haitians how to become self-sustainable by growing livestock. Though she happened to be in the country during the January 2010 earthquake and the cholera outbreak, she has plans to return to the country. Kaplan-Pasternak will be given a presidential service award for her service work.
THE GAMBIA
John Hager (00-02) is a science teacher at Columbia Independent School and exotic lizard enthusiast. His teaching method encourages students to learn by trial and error. Hager also aims to give students a global perspective, which he does by sharing his experiences of living in different cultures with his classes.
