Letter from the Director
A Loss to our Community
Alumni Interview
Faculty Viewpoint: LogFrame
Faculty Viewpoint: Change
Faculty Updates
Careers Services
Career News

ALUMNI NEWS

Tanya Javed, MA 06, and Silal Shafqat, MA 06, on their July 14 marriage in Pakistan. Best wishes!

Assel Nussupova, MA 05, and Walton Burns, MA 05, on their wedding in Kazakhstan on February 11, 2006. Congratulations!

Dan Updegraft, MA 05, on his marriage to his fiance, Haydee, in Veracruz, Mexico, on April 22, 2006. Best wishes!

Nathalie Tinguery, MA 06, Feldman Fellow, gave birth to twin boys -- Aaron and Moses -- on July 6, at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA. Mother and boys will be returning home to Burkina Faso in mid-August. Nathalie can be reached at natting@brandeis.edu.

Heath & Kelly Arensen, MA 06, delivered a 9lb, 22-inch baby boy--William Douglass Arensen--in Charlevoix, MI on July 14th.

No new news yet on Kristen and Tate Munro's, MA 06, excitedly anticipated arrival expected sometime around mid/late-August

Cynthia Valdes, MA 05, is expected to deliver a baby boy on September 24 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Monica D'Onofrio, MA 03, based in Bangkok, Thailand, is now 4 months pregnant.

Elizabeth Kenny, MS 05, and her boyfriend were seriously injured when hit by a motorist crossing the street in Portland, OR (USA) on July 8. Liz has been transferred to "Crotched Mountain" rehabilitation center in Greenfield, NH. Physically, she is doing fine, but she is still under recovery from a brain injury. Please keep them in your well-wishings and prayers. If you would like to support Liz and her family in any way, please contact Abhijit Deshpande at apd@bu.edu. Liz, we hope to see you up and about soon!

ALUMNI ARTICLES

"Circus act triggers mine awareness in Ethiopia," by John McKay, MA 05

"Shannon Oliver aims to make a difference" about Shannon Oliver, MA 05

ALUMNI PICS

(click to enlarge)

The Riecken Foundation works with teenagers from all over Honduras to create youth leaders who can contribute to social change in their country. The youth in these groups are learning about theater and current events. Two SID alums work for the Foundation: Jenean Smith, MA 05, directs youth programs and Ariela Rosenstein, MA 05, is a program and training specialist.

Jiway Tung, MA 05, sent along these photos of the Learning Farm, a project of Boston-based World Education. The organic farm and educational center provides entrepreneurial and life skills training to Indonesian youth. Jiway is youth program advisor for World Education in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Letter from the Director

Welcome to the first edition of the SID Global Alumni e-Newsletter!

Across the globe, SID is now represented by over 440 MA and MS graduates in 70 countries. From its beginning 12 years ago, SID has been an extraordinary community of people dedicating their lives to the eradication of preventable suffering and to the cause of equitable and just development.

This e-Newsletter aims to better bind together this community and to showcase the contributions of alumni, faculty, staff and students to this humanitarian mission.

Those of you who graduated years ago will note our growth. With approximately 120 graduate students matriculating this September, we continue our leadership in the field of academic and practical training in development. Each year our incoming students are awardees of prestigious scholarship competitions including the Joint Japan-World Bank Scholars, Fulbright and Presidential Scholars, and Rotary International. This year, we are honored to have the largest cluster in America of Ford Foundation International Fellows pursing graduate degrees. Read More> > >

A Loss to our Community

It with great sadness that we inform you of the death of Agbedan Guillaume Kakanou, a 2004 graduate of our program. Guillaume died in a motor accident while on a long-term observer mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Carter Center. Guillaume would have been just 26 years old this summer. Our hearts go out to his parents and family in Benin.

Guillaume was the purest of souls, a genuinely sweet person, who devoted his life, however brief, in the service of Africa, to the poor and vulnerable. He was passionate about building democratic institutions that might give hope for change. After graduation, he was employed by the National Democratic Institute's office in Rabat, Morocco and was recently assigned to the Carter Center mission. Read More> > >

Alumni Interview
Pem Wangdi, MA 04

For the last six months, I have been working with the Bhutan National Commission for Women and Children as its program officer. Prior to that, I worked closely with the Commission as a consultant for the UNDP Bhutan Program.

There are a lot of political changes going on in Bhutan right now. In 2008, the present king of Bhutan will abdicate in favor of his son, the crown prince. In 2008, the country will also adopt its first constitution and hold the first-ever parliamentary elections, moving from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy. Most of the Commission's activities and programs are focused on ensuring that women's and children's issues and rights are not compromised and their interests and concerns are considered as the country progresses. Read More> > >

Faculty Viewpoint: Remember the LogFrame?
Prof. Susan Holcombe

Remember the LogFrame? How many SID graduates are using the Logical Framework tools in their work? Using the LogFrame is a central part of the SID Planning and Implementation Curriculum and an important problem solving approach. While faculty include classroom exercises in the use of the LogFrame, the "Waltham Bus Case" and others are only a start in the learning process. There are always the challenges of adapting the tools to local situations and capacities, and of preparing the detailed LogFrame proposals that some donors require. Faculty, as well as students, face those challenges when they move from the classroom to the real world.

Every June I go to Tibet to support the work of the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, an NGO founded by my husband in 1998 to work on livelihoods promotion and improved health in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Read More> > >

Faculty Viewpoint: How does change happen?
Prof. Kelley Ready

How does change happen? This is a question that three SID alums, Rebecca Pearl, MA 01, Alice Macharia, MA 04, and Sabina Path, MA 01, and I pondered over four days last October along with 2000 feminists and human rights activists (both women and a number of men) from 120 countries. The venue was the tenth international forum of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) in Bangkok, Thailand. Read More> > >

Faculty Updates

Over the summer, Professor Maria Green has been working on research and on bringing new courses to the SID curriculum. In 2005-2006, she added "Health and Human Rights;" in 2006-2007 she will add a public international law sequence in two modules: "International Law for Development Professionals," and "Seminar in International Law." She and Prof. Attila Klein are collaborating to create an innovative interdisciplinary course called "Right to Water" that they will introduce this fall. Her research work lately has focused on process rights and development. Read More> > >

Career Services

In late August, Heller's Office of Career Services will launch EASE (Electronic Application for Students and Employers), a comprehensive career management database that contains listings of job opportunities. Alumni will be able to register to gain access to these listings as well as other employer information. Alumni can also choose to post a resume that can be searched by employers, or sign up for e-mail alerts when a job of interest is posted. In addition to EASE, the Careers webpage will include helpful links to career-related resources and information about resume and cover letter development, networking, interviewing, and salary negotiation.

EASE also provides tools to facilitate networking among alumni as well as students. For example, if alumni are seeking to hire for an internship or job at their organization, EASE can be used to recruit talented Heller students and graduates. Until the end of August, alums can still access the former Career Services page.

Career News

Eric Geers, MA 05, is now a public health promotion advisor with Oxfam Great Britian in Chad. He assists local and international teams that provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people from the Darfur conflict in Sudan.

Padma Buggineni, MA 05, is a senior coordinator for policy advocacy at Aide et Action in Hyderabad, India. She is currently working on the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) protocol project in collaboration with Cornell University and the Indian School of Business. Find more info at bop-protocol.org.

Malick Ceesay, MA 04, is regional advisor for the United Nations Department of Peace Keeping Operations in Sudan-Northern Africa.

Monika Singh, MA 05, is now working as a research associate with the Centre for Microfinance in India. She is based in Ahmedabad and will be developing a microinsurance product and then monitoring its feasibility.

Agne Kurutyte, MA 05, was hired as project manager for the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Zack Lenawamuro, MA 03, is based in Kenya and works as a project manager for Kageno. Find more info at www.kageno.org.

Ben Baggett, MA 05, is working for a small nonprofit called the Community Farm Alliance in Louisville, Kentucky. The organization is trying to build a sustainable local food economy in metro Louisville by developing a local distribution business for locally grown goods -- the first of its kind in the state.