2008 Fellows
Benjamin Alsdurf
Community Aid Network Uganda
Uganda
Ben graduated from Calvin College in 2005 with a degree in philosophy and political science. Since then he has worked with community development organizations in Honduras and Uganda as well as on a number of political campaigns in Minnesota. In the fall of 2007 he served as an election observer in Sierra Leone and volunteer with Democracy Sierra Leone, a coalition of civil societies. In the fall he will be attending the University of Chicago to pursue a master’s degree in International Relations.
Ben plans to use his fellowship to build on the work and relationships he formed with the Community Aid Network Uganda (CANU) last year, specifically helping to develop an education and advocacy program for the rights of children. Based in Tororo, in the eastern part of the country, he will work to educate community leaders on the rights of children as well as develop a network of volunteer attorneys willing to represent cases of human rights violations. Through the work he began with CANU last year, Ben hopes to build on the organization’s success in affecting change in rural Ugandan communities.
Jonathan Brandis
Housing Preservation Project
St. Paul, Minnesota
Jonathan, a native and resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, is a second-year law student. He became interested in affordable housing issues while interning at the St. Paul office of the late Senator Paul Wellstone in the summer of 2002. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in Political Science in 2004, Jonathan went to work in the private sector, and in 2006 decided to go to law school at William Mitchell College of Law to pursue his dream of working to serve the less fortunate.
This summer, Jonathan will clerk at the Housing Preservation Project, working on the Foreclosure Relief Law Project. He will work with Twin Cities’ homeowners facing foreclosure to root out violations of the Truth in Lending Act in their mortgages, and negotiate with lenders to allow families to keep their homes. Jonathan will also contribute to legal research when necessary.
Melanie Clatanoff
Center for Public Interest Law
Accra, Ghana
Melanie Clatanoff received her B.A. in French from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts in 2006. She is currently in her first year at the University of Minnesota Law School. Melanie is interested in women’s rights, especially reproductive rights issues, and is a member of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. She has travelled throughout Europe and lived in Paris, France, where she taught English as a Foreign Language. In 2007, she briefly travelled through Ghana and Togo, which inspired her to combine her legal studies with her interest in international human rights.
During her fellowship, Melanie will work at the Center for Public Interest Law in Accra, Ghana. The Center's current projects include a housing rights program to help victims of forced evictions, and an assistance program for mining communities in west Ghana. The Center aims to make justice accessible and affordable to the poor and marginalized individuals in Ghana by way of education, research, and free legal aid and court room representations.
Amelia Cotton Corl
Center for Victims of Torture
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Amelia Cotton Corl is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is concurrently pursuing a graduate minor in human rights focusing on genocide and women and children’s rights. Her dissertation research addresses children's rights and the concept of agency in childhood in the international human rights community. Amelia’s current research explores the identification of perpetrators by different cohorts of Holocaust survivors based on data from the Shoah Visual History Archives. Her ongoing research investigates the links between the theoretical frameworks of collective memory and cultural trauma and the problem of children participating in armed conflict.
As an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellow, Amelia will spend the summer working with the Center for Victims of Torture on the anti-torture public policy campaign, headquartered in Washington, DC, developing materials for media and grassroots use. The campaign, which will be launched publicly in the spring of 2008, aims to expand America’s growing anti-torture movement and mobilize the political will necessary to change U.S. policy with the support of religious leaders and experts in the military, security and foreign policy sectors.
Geoff Dancy
International Center for Transitional Justice
New York City, New York
Geoff is a M.A. in Political Science who began pursuing his Ph.D. in the fall of 2007 at the University of Minnesota. His research is broadly interested in the merging of normative and rationalist studies of decision-making using cross-national data. Specifically, Geoff has an interest in questions surrounding international law, transitional justice, and human rights. His Master’s thesis, “Do As They Say and As They Do: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Norm Influence on Truth Commission Initiation, 1976-2003� (MA Thesis, Department of Political Science, University of North Texas, 2006), examines whether truth commissions are an “effective� institution, in addition to why they are established by state leaders in the first place. Geoff also worked for two years as an editorial assistant for International Studies Quarterly before teaching three sections of American Politics and four sections of International Relations as an adjunct instructor at the University of North Texas. He has published in Social Sciences Quarterly, and has presented papers at numerous conferences, most notably the International Studies Association Annual Convention.
Swati Deo
Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights
Cairo, Egypt
Swati is currently completing her first year of a Master in Public Policy degree at the Humphrey Institute—University of Minnesota, where she is specializing in policy analysis and human rights. Prior to coming to the Humphrey, she worked as a project manager at a market research firm and a program evaluation center; she also worked briefly in Ecuador.
This summer, she will be doing a 12-week internship with the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in Cairo. She will be assisting in the development of their internal research unit, and conducting research for upcoming human rights campaigns. The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights works to promote the civil and political rights of women in Egypt and the Arab region, and to promote a strong civil society.
Anna Donnelly
Genocide Intervention Network
Twin Cities, Minnesota
Anna will graduate from the University of Minnesota in Fall 2008 with a B.A. in Global Studies and Spanish. Since its founding three years ago, Anna has worked with the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) to empower citizens and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide through education, advocacy and fundraising. Anna along with her fellow GI-Net members received the Youth in Philanthropy award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals. In fall 2007, Anna received the A.I. Johnson Scholarship from the University of Minnesota in order to work as a research intern for GI-Net investigating human rights atrocities throughout Latin America. The following semester, Anna interned with Dr. Daniel Feierstein at the University of Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, Argentina researching the collective memory in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in the aftermath of the military dictatorships. While in Buenos Aires, Anna also worked with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line by assisting them with advocacy work and the development of their living memory.
With the fellowship, Anna will document individuals’ experiences of human rights violations in Latin America through taped testimonies in order to: have the testimonies available for educational purposes; validate the survivors’ experiences; externalize the horrific events and promote healing; provide an outlet for the community to be heard. For the project, Anna will use interview protocols based on guidelines from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and modeling the USC Shoah Foundation Institute: for Visual History and Education. The information will be available through the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota and through GI-Net-MN complementing the organizations’ statewide education and outreach. The Genocide Intervention Network is hoping to conduct similar documentation projects throughout the country connecting the local to the global while educating the community about Latin American conflicts and advocating on the victims’ behalf.
Elizabeth Hagmann
International Leadership Institute
Uganda Women's Coalition for Peace
Uganda
Elizabeth is from Fridley, Minnesota and currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls. She will be graduating in December 2008 with a BA in International Studies and Business Administration. Post graduation, she hopes to pursue a graduate degree in International Development. She has studied abroad in 13 countries in Europe, as well as traveled to Sudan, Tanzania and Kenya. While spending time in Africa, she developed an interest in improving the living conditions of the people.
In conjunction with the International Leadership Institute (ILI) and the Uganda Women's Coalition for Peace, she will be using all of her education and previous fund-raising experience preparing fund-raising events, for August distribution in the war effected area of Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. She will be studying the opportunities as they exist to make measurable progress in the human rights situation and preparing detailed reports of the research conducted by the Women’s Coalition for Peace and the ILI in order to help others organize community fund-raisers and to raise awareness of the human rights violations of the women and girls in the war affected area. She will participate as a team member in the dissemination of this information, which will allow ILI as well as other organizations and world bodies to design projects which contribute to long term sustainable change in the lives of women and girls in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.
Luke Haqq
Center for Victims of Torture
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Luke graduated from Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN in 2006 with a B.A. in philosophy and linguistics. He also spent time as a visiting student at Oxford University, studying philosophy and Islam and completed his MSc in philosophy from the University of Edinburgh this past year. In fall 2008, he will do a joint JD/PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy program in UC-Berkeley.
Luke worked with the Center for Victims of Torture last summer on their International Capacity-Building project. This summer, he will be working on their New Tactics in Human Rights project. This project seeks to find effective strategies and tactics for addressing human rights, viz. tactics which have the versatility to be adapted to similar situations elsewhere. The goal of New Tactics is to disseminate this information globally, so organizations can learn from the successes and failures of others. A tactic could be, for example, getting people to write letters to local and federal officials when a country's government tries to contravene anti-torture laws. Or a tactic could involve holding a youth rally to garner grassroots support for a certain measure to be taken. New Tactics offers small grants to other organizations to help propel these efforts, as well as training tools and workshops. His focus will be to contact organizations who have been recipients in the past in order to document the efficacy of New Tactics' efforts, and where their strengths and weaknesses are located. This is intended to help New Tactics discern how to adjust its efforts for future workshops, tools, and future grant recipients.
David Hauth
Green Empowerment/Asofenix
Managua, Nicaragua
David graduated from St. John’s University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and will be attaining his degree in Aerospace Engineering this May from the University of Minnesota. As his interest and background in the sciences and engineering grew and he began to see technology as an answer to much of the economic, social and health problems afflicting people in developing world. Over the past few years David’s experience and background in renewable energy technology has grown through coursework, his research in the University of Minnesota’s Solar Energy Lab and involvement in student groups such as Applied Environmental Solutions. It is with this experience that he hopes to make a difference implementing renewable energy systems in rural Nicaraguan villages.
David’s fellowship begins in August, when he plans on spending 1 year in Nicaragua volunteering on with a Portland based organization, Green Empowerment, and their local partner NGO, Asofenix. Green Empowerment is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering human rights and social justice through community development, local leadership and sustainability in developing nations. To further this aim they are dedicated to promoting community-based renewable energy, potable water delivery and related watershed restoration to international communities in need. Asofenix, a small Nicaraguan NGO founded by 5 engineering students, is dedicated to finding environmentally sustainable and economically feasible energy and water solutions for rural Nicaraguan communities.
While with Asofenix, David will be working on solar water pumping projects, a bicycle-powered battery charging station and designs for pico-hydro and small-scale wind systems. He will also be building a website for Asofenix as well as working on developing partnerships between Asofenix and a US based renewable energy distributor called DC Power. Finally David will be preparing several watershed management plans and sanitation education programs.
Rebakah Heckmann
FundaciĎŚn Cimas del Ecuador
Ecudor
Benita Kaneza
Ligue Iteka
Burundi
Benita was born and raised in Bujumbura, Burundi. She is currently an international relations major at St Cloud State University with an emphasis in political and economic development. In the future she hopes to attain an International Law degree with an emphasis in international human rights. Benita has a strong passion for the oppressed and has the drive to fight against human rights violations all over the world.
During the summer of 2008, she will work with Ligue Iteka, one of the leading human rights organizations in Burundi. She will work with a team in charge of monitoring human rights in prisons, camps, and other detentions centers. It will also allow her to get familiar with the practical field of human rights. She believes that as Burundians speak out of human rights violations the society and the international community will have a better force to end them. She believes that there is still hope in Burundi and this can come from understanding and helping healing wounds that the war has caused. She hopes to get the youth involved in the process of reclaiming what has been taken from them: their rights.
Although the Burundian government has promised free healthcare to women and children under five there are still many that are untreated or detained in state hospitals. The detainees are living in unimaginable conditions. Ligue Iteka pleads on their behalf to the government, donors and hopes to make decisions on cutting Burundian debts and sending aid so doctors can treat those in need. One of the projects she hopes to accomplish is to fundraise for these women and children to purchase basic needs that hospitals do not provide for them.
Ji Hyong Lee
University of Minnesota Human Rights Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Ji was born in Seoul, South Korea, but he has spent his childhood in San Francisco, and his teenage years in Turkey and Hungary. After studying International Relations in Dongguk University, Korea, he has served the Korean Army as an English Interpreter for two years. Upon finishing his military service, he worked at International Finance Institute as an assistant sales associate. Currently, he is studying for his Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Ji will be working at the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota. He recently returned from a six month trip through Central America, working as a part time summer intern in an NGO called the Advanced Infrastructure Development Group in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. He also participated in a study abroad program in San Jose, Costa Rica. Using those experiences, he will assist the Center with its cooperation with FLASCO, an organization of several universities throughout Mexico. This will involve dealing with the Dream Act in Minnesota, which allows low income immigrant students to be eligible for in-state tuition for college. Furthermore, he will also assist translating the online Human Rights Library of English documents into Korean.
Caitlyn Lothian
Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
St. Paul, Minnesota
Caitlyn Lothian is a student at the College of Saint Benedict. She is majoring in Peace Studies and Sociology, with interests in justice, global issues, public health, immigration, and human rights. She has spent four months studying in South Africa, and she hopes to continue her education by earning a law degree in Human Rights and a Master's in either Public Health or Immigration and Refugee Studies. She has interned at Lutheran Social Services in the Refugee Resettlement Program, and this has influenced and guided her passion for human rights and immigration issues.
She will spend the summer with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota serving as the Education Intern. She will assist in redesigning the educational materials and program presented to immigrant youth in the Twin Cities about the consequences of crime in the United States. She hopes to incorporate issues of human rights into the curriculum, so the participants have a greater awareness of their rights.
Amanda Lyons
International Center for Transitional Justice
Bogotá, Colombia
Amanda was born and raised in Austin, Minnesota. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2004, where she studied Sociology and Latin American Studies. After teaching English in Brazil for two years, she moved back to the Midwest to study international human rights law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is currently in her second year, and expects to graduate in 2009.
Over the summer Amanda will be working with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in Bogotá, Colombia. The ICTJ works primarily in societies emerging from armed conflict or repressive rule, seeking accountability for past abuses and respect for human rights in the context of a peace process. In order to promote justice, peace, and reconciliation, a variety of transitional justice approaches are used. Amanda will be working in the Justice Unit, which focuses on criminal prosecution for past human rights violations.
Joe Mailander
Pillsbury Communities-Waite House
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Joe Mailander is a 2008 graduate of Saint John’s University where he majored in Spanish. Three years ago, Joe co-founded a non profit music organization called The Medicinal Strings that promotes the arts within underserved communities as a bluegrass band. His band has traveled the country for three summers playing folk concerts and leading educational workshops for all ages. Joe also served as a teacher’s aide, camp counselor, conference organizer, and retreat leader throughout his high school and college years. Joe is passionate about a human right to education, to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, and to enjoy the arts.
This summer, Joe Mailander will be spending his time at Pillsbury Communities Waite House in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is his goal to create a youth music program at the Waite House that encourages youth to take the stage through musical performance, poetic expression, and cultural preservation, and in turn, take the stage as an active and responsible member of their community at large. Beginning with the basics of singing, he will teach a wide variety of children’s choir songs from around the world. From that point, the students and Joe will explore different instruments, how to read notes, approaches to song writing, and various musical styles from different cultures. For students who are especially interested in pursuing music, he will provide private or group lessons to learn the piano or the guitar. To showcase the students’ work and progress at the end of the summer, Joe will hold a community concert or record a CD of their music.
Giovanni Mantilla
Human Rights Watch
New York City, New York
Giovanni Mantilla is currently a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He holds B.A. degrees in Political Science and in Languages and Sociocultural Studies from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, his native country. Giovanni has experience in the area of business, human rights, conflict and peace building, particularly in Colombia. His research focuses, among others, on the emergence and impact of international human rights norms and standards on non-state actors such as corporations and armed groups. He also has a developing research interest in LGBT rights and in humanitarianism.
This summer Giovanni will be supporting the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York City. Giovanni will pursue research related to abuses against the LGBT community by members of paramilitary groups in Colombia. He will also look into hate crimes committed in Mexico City against LGBT human rights defenders. His work will contribute to upcoming reports by HRW on Colombia and Mexico.
Joao Medeiros
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The Hague, Netherlands
Joao received is Bachelor's degree as a Theater major from Grinnell College in 2002. He will receive his J.D. this spring from the University of Minnesota Law School. He is presently a member of the Minnesota Law Review, which published his student note in its present volume. As the son of a Brazilian diplomat, Mr. Medeiros was exposed to a wide variety of countries and cultures during his childhood. He has built on this experience through two summer experiences abroad during his undergraduate and professional education.
Mr. Medeiros will use his fellowship to fund an internship in the trial chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The trial chambers of the tribunal are responsible for conducting judicial pre-trial and trial activities. Interns in the trial chambers are assigned to a specific chamber and directly assist judges by conducting legal research and writing, drafting legal documents, assisting with the management of documentary evidence, and participating in legal discussion and analysis.
The ICTY was established by U.N. Security Council resolution 827 on May 25, 1993. The tribunal is tasked with reviewing human rights violations associated with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. As a legal institution, the tribunal has had the opportunity to set important precedents in international humanitarian law, and has been tasked with addressing many questions of first impression, as well as issues that have lain dormant since the war crimes tribunals that followed the close of World War II.
George Norris
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
Arusha, Tanzania
George is currently a first year law student at the University of Minnesota. He graduated from Macalester College in 2004 with a Bachelors of Art in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Before law school he served in the United States Peace Corps as a Water & Sanitation Technician in the Philippines and most recently he spent a week in Ghana with The Advocates for Human Rights as a volunteer taking statements for the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This summer, George will be working at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the Office of the Registrar. The ICTR’s mandate is to prosecute genocide and other major violations of international humanitarian law that occurred during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The Registrar is responsible for the overall administration and management of the tribunal and provides judicial and legal support services to the trial Chambers and the Office of the Prosecution.
Amanda Noska
Hospital Bienfaisance Pignon
Pignon, Haiti
Amanda Noska is an MD/MPH student at the University of Minnesota, currently finishing up her public health curriculum and soon to entering into her third year of clinical medicine rotations in the Twin Cities area. In December 2008- February 2009, she will travel to Pignon, Haiti to complete her Human Rights Fellowship. This will be a return visit for her, since she was in Pignon in July of 2007 for a brief month-long visit. Pignon is a rural community and home to over 35,000 people, located northeast of Port au Prince in a mountainous region of Haiti about a 45 minute charter flight from the capital city.
During Amanda’s time in Pignon, she will be working alongside the administration and staff of Hopital Benfaisance Pignon (HBP), many of whom she had the privilege to meet and work with during her past stay, in order to gain a more thorough understanding of the daily medical, public health, and community functions of the people and city of Pignon and to better comprehend the human rights situation therein. Through this experience, she hopes to establish long-term connections with HBP and the community of Pignon, to become part of recruiting and advocating for the medical and health needs of the people of Pignon. Also, she would like to play a role in creating awareness of the human rights situation within the region. She hopes to maintain the friendships that began to form during her initial visit to the region as well.
Megan O’Rourke
Balaod Mindanaw
Cagayan de Oro, Philippines
Megan is from St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 2005. After graduation, Megan joined the Peace Corps where she served in Ecuador from 2005-2007. During her time in Ecuador she helped found an anti-human trafficking task force, worked with women’s groups, and implemented a number of community banks in rural areas. Currently, Megan is in her first year at the University of Minnesota Law School. She hopes to pursue a career in International Law with a focus on Human Rights.
Megan’s fellowship will take her to the Philippines where she will be living and working in Cagayan de Oro City on the southern island of Mindanao. She will work with BALAOD Mindanaw (Balay Alternative Legal Advocates for Development), a legal resource organization with a focus on alternative human rights law and capacity building. The organization serves the needs of the poor and marginalized sectors which are comprised mainly of local farmers, fisherfolks, Indigenous people and women. Megan will be working closely with the staff of human rights lawyers assisting with legal research and participating in case management and policy advocacy in the field.
Roseanne Pereira
Center for Victims of Torture
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Roseanne Pereira grew up in Fort Lauderdale, FL. She received her B.A. in literature from Yale University and her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, where she focused on creative nonfiction prose. In 2005, she was one of three Kroc fellows selected to spend a year in Washington, DC learning public radio journalism. After training at NPR, she moved to Minneapolis where she served as the fellowship reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. Her radio features focused on issues in area immigrant communities and on the work of international humanitarian and human rights organizations active in the Twin Cities. Currently, she is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis. One of Roseanne's most memorable summer jobs was as an ESL and American culture instructor for refugees resettled in Louisville, KY. She has also been a volunteer at the Tibet Justice Center in Berkeley, CA and a member of Human Rights Watch Young Advocates in San Francisco.
During the summer of 2008, Roseanne will be working with the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Paul, MN on a public education campaign that will expand the nation's anti-torture movement. She will help with outreach and to develop written materials to raise awareness about torture.
Rachel Peterson
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
Abuja, Nigeria
Rachel is a graduate of Bethel University with a Bachelor’s degree in History and Art History. She recently completed three years of service in the Peace Corps in Madagascar where she taught English in a rural town and organized several gender empowerment activities in the first two years. In her third year of service she worked with Population Service International in one of their provincial offices as a HIV/AIDS technical advisor with their peer education program which stressed HIV testing and counseling. She plans to pursue her graduate studies in International Development with a gender focus.
During her Fellowship, Rachel will work with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Abuja, Nigeria where she will focus on violence against women and HIV/AIDS. UNIFEM supports women’s empowerment programs within countries as well as collaborates with governments and women’s’ groups to bring women’s’ rights into policies and laws that uphold the fundamentals of UNIFEM.
Roger Renville
Indian Law Resource Center
Helena, Montana
Roger is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton (Dakota) Oyate and a descendent of Chief Gabriel Renville. Roger was born on the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota and has lived for many years in Montana. He graduated from the University of Montana-Missoula in 1992 with Bachelor of the Arts degrees in history, political science and journalism. He earned a Master's degree in American History at Yale. Roger's varied career includes teaching high school social studies on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. He is currently a second-year law student at the University of Minnesota Law School.
For his Fellowship project, Roger will work with the Indian Law Resource Center, at its Helena, Montana, office. Since 1978, the Center's lawyers and staff have advocated for the rights of indigenous people throughout North America and Central America. They have litigated indigenous land claims on behalf of Shoshone activists Mary and Carrie Dann and environmental reclamation claims on behalf of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes in Montana. The Center is involved in the campaign to protect the sacred Bear Butte in South Dakota. The Center's international work includes precedent-setting litigation on behalf of the Awas Tingni community in Nicaragua—where aboriginal land title was affirmed as a matter of international law by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. The Center's most recent accomplishment—shared with many allies in the indigenous and human rights communities—is the United Nations' adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Kristin Roehl
Grameen Bank
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Kristin graduated from the College of Saint Benedict in 2007 with a degree in Liberal Studies and a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. She is currently a full time AmeriCorps volunteer with the St. Joseph Worker program in Minneapolis. The majority of her volunteer position time is spent with a domestic violence agency working in the development department.
During her fellowship with the Upper Midwest Human Rights Center, Kristin will be conducting research at the Grameen Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank provides small loans to women who would not otherwise be allowed to have an account with a traditional bank in Bangladesh. She will observe the distribution of loans in rural villages and visit the businesses that women have been able to start as a result of receiving these loans. Kristin will also be researching the overall effectiveness of the microfinance economy in Dhaka and its surrounding villages.
Robyn Skrebes
Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Robyn graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 2003 with a Bachelors degree in Political Science. After graduation, she spent three years with a non-profit political organization. Currently a graduate student in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Robyn is working toward a Master of Public Policy with concentrations in global policy and human rights. As a student at Humphrey, Robyn has studied human rights in both academic and practical settings. She has worked with Plan International (Honduras), The Advocates for Human Rights, and World Relief Organization. In October of 2007, Robyn worked with her classmates to organize Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction, in which she has served as Chair for the last several months. Through Yar’s Campaign, Robyn has traveled to Africa to examine children’s rights in post-conflict Sudan.
This summer, Robyn will continue her work as chair of Yar’s Campaign to End Child Abduction. Her goals for the summer include developing the image of the Yar’s Campaign, building relationships with key actors, and creating a vision to take the organization into the coming year. Robyn is excited and grateful to have the opportunity to continue her work with Yar’s Campaign. Through Yar’s Campaign, Robyn hopes to provide a voice to vulnerable children and families, and to contribute to peace and stability in South Sudan.
Lindsay Smith
Center for Minority Rights Development
Nairobi, Kenya
Lindsay is currently a first year student at the University of Minnesota Law School. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan in English and Sociology, with a minor in African and Afro-American Studies. Lindsay is a board member of the law school’s Amnesty International chapter and participated in the Asylum Law Project at the law school, where she spent a week volunteering at the St. Thomas Institute for Human Rights Center in Miami to work on immigration and asylum law cases.
During the summer, Lindsay will be interning with the Centre for Minority Rights Development in Nairobi, Kenya. CEMIRIDE is an NGO that works to strengthen the capacity of minorities and indigenous peoples in Kenya and the rest of Africa and to secure the rights of these communities in all social, political, and economic development processes. While in Nairobi, Lindsay will be participating in various advocacy campaigns around the country and working with the Justice and Equality program to research and draft pleadings to be presented to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the African Union.
Ann Theisen
El Centro de OrientaciĂłn del Migrante
Oaxaca, Mexico
Ann holds a Masters of Public Affairs from the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire in English and Spanish Education and worked for 12 years as a middle and high school teacher in Texas and Minnesota. She has also worked with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and The Advocates for Human Rights to educate the general public and immigrants themselves about their human rights and responsibilities regarding immigration law, the contributions immigrants make to the United States and the complexities of current immigration legislative proposals.
As an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellow, Ann is grateful for the opportunity to volunteer with COMI, El Centro de Orientación del Migrante in Oaxaca, Mexico. COMI’s mission is to offer aid, respite and shelter to migrants. They operate a house of hospitality where passing migrants are provided three days and nights of food, medical attention, lodging and an orientation regarding the risks and consequences of migration as well as training about their human rights and obligations. During her ten-week fellowship, Ann will share her expertise in immigration education for incorporation in orientation sessions, community workshops and design of educational materials. Ann will set up a website for COMI and will assist with development research and grant-writing. She hopes to spend as much time as possible directly serving migrants in the house of hospitality - cooking, accompanying them to the clinic and listening to their experiences. She hopes to gain more understanding of the causes of migration. Upon returning to the U.S., Ann will have real-life examples to add to the policy explanations and statistics she uses in presentations for educating the majority community about human rights and the immigration issue. Additionally, she plans to produce an online audio lesson for U.S. students using interviews conducted with migrants served by COMI. This lesson will be added to The Advocates for Human Rights, “Energy of a Nation� website.
