StudentsTeach: Deployment Team, Partners and Advisers

== StudentsTeach: Team Member - Cate Elander

Cate Elander is a graduating Masters student in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware http://www.suapp.udel.edu/. She is studying Community Development. A community organizer for the past three years, she has extensive experience working with underserved communities and believes strongly in the power of community participation and leadership. She also runs a youth council in a low-income Delaware neighborhood, working with young residents to identify and leverage their assets and power to raise awareness and initiate change. Her resume is located here: http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/45/Elander_cate_resume.doc Cate became interested in Tanzania and the Tarakea community in particular when she began working with fellow student and StudentsTeach: Tanzania team member Fratern Tarimo on a volunteer tourism project called Volunteer Tanzania. Through the early development of this project, she met with leaders at local schools in the area, discussing potential volunteer placements and capacity to support long term volunteers. During these visits, she met with Reverend Marandu of St. Pius and toured St. Pius English Medium. Serving as the Project Coordinator and US Partnership Coordinator for the Students Teach: Tanzania team, she is contributing the following to the development of this project:

•Proposal and budget development

•Connections with Duke University School Partnership and DukeEngage "Literacy through Photography" program in Arusha, Tanzania

•Provision of consistent volunteers through Volunteer Tanzania

•Experience facilitating collaborative and community-based problem solving in underserved communities

•Experience working with youth to identify and use their knowledge to serve their communities

StudentsTeach: Team Member - Jeff Mascornick

Jeff Mascornick is a graduate student at the University of Delaware focusing on nonprofit management. His resume is available here http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Jeff_Mascornick_Resume.doc He has a strong social science background and holds a Masters Degree in Sociology: Rural and Environmental Development, and B.A. in Geography and Anthropology – both from the University of Montana. During the past two years Jeff was an AmeriCorpsVISTA member at a comprehensive social service organization working as a grant writer securing approximately $1 million in grant funding during this time.

He has served as board member and/or volunteer at several nonprofits focusing on environmental sustainability, early childhood development, and social justice over the past several years. Jeff's interests include nonprofit management, environmental sustainability, social entrepreneurship, the application of Web 2.0 technology by nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, and participatory democracy. He is motivated by the desire to work towards social justice and environmental sustainability in a world where so many have so little and so few have so much and where greed and apathy continue to threaten ecosystems and social structures. He is committed to the mission of OLPC and believes that the program has the potential to create an Open Source collaborative learning environment that will create possible solutions to both of these problems by educating and empowering children one laptop, one text message, one collaborative project at a time.

Jeff brings the following skills to the StudentsTeach:

• Project planning, development and evaluation

• Fundraising

• Nonprofit governance and leadership

• Analytical and critical thinking skills

Although Jeff does not have a technical background he is comfortable enough with information technology to succeed in providing a bridge between the students and teachers and the IT specialist(s) his team will be working with in Tarakea. After all, in order to bridge the technology gap the ability to utilize technology must become (and is becoming) a tool that the average person (not only technicians) can utilize to connect, collaborate and effect change within an Open Source environment in the Information Age.

US Partners/Advisors

• US Classroom Partnership Partners: David Stein, Senior Schools Partnership Coordinator, Duke University Office

       of Community Affairs  Linda Tugurian, Technology Coordinator, Forest View Elementary School 

• Student Exchange Advisor: Thea Williamson, Program Manager, Global Partners Junior

• Technology/Learning Advisors: Elena Rue and Katie Hyde, Co-Project Coordinators, Literacy through

       Photography, Tanzania 

• Technical Advisor: Kevin Hunter, Doctoral Student, North Carolina State University, Computer Engineering

       Tanzania Partners/Advisors 

• NGO Partner: Vitalis Kimario, Director, Trans Regional Environment Technology Association (TRETA)

• Deployment School Partner: Reverend Valerian Herman Marandu, Director, St. Pius English Medium

• Local Technical Advisor: Benjamin Crispin, Engineer, Zain Communications