Advisory Board
Jeanne Barclay
Jeanne has a BA in psychology from Boston College and a Masters in International Education from Harvard Univeristy. From 1980-1990 she volunteered and led workcamps in England, USA, Russia, Germany, Czech, Poland, and Turkey, served on the Board of Directors for VFP and worked in the office of two partner organizations in Germany. Jeanne's professional work has always focused on coordinating educational programs related to international exchange. Jeanne lives in Germany with her husband and two sons.
Bob Belenky with Orphans in Russia.
Bob Belenky
Bob has spent his entire adult life working with children in one capacity or another. As a teenager he took summer jobs as a camp counselor. He later went on for a doctorate at Columbia University in Clinical Psychology and did a postdoctoral fellowship in Child and Family Psychology at the Harvard Medical Center's Judge Baker Child Guidance Clinic. He taught at several universities and became the founding dean of Goddard College's innovative graduate program. His private practice included fourteen years in his Vermont wilderness setting, The Clearing. Since retirement in 1995, he makes annual visits to Haiti and Russia as part of an informal research project on institutional and community care of children who grow up in the absence of family support. You can visit his website here.
Mary Brook
Mary Finley-Brook is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Richmond, where she teaches courses on sustainability and international development. Mary began participating in international workcamps with Volunteers for Peace in 1988. She has volunteered in or organized more than a dozen international and US workcamps. Mary speaks Spanish fluently and has traveled in 23 countries.
Peter Hagerty & Marty Tracy
Peter and Marty operate a small draft horse and a sheep farm in Porter, Maine. Peter graduated from Harvard University in 1968 with a degree in Clinical Psychology and is a Navy veteran who refused orders to Vietnam. His past involvements include being a teacher and member of the Board of Directors for The Group School, in Cambridge, MA (an alternative high school). Peter was the Local Steward of the Maine Woodsman's Association and both he and Marty currently run a Russian-American for profit yarn business called Peace Fleece. Marty was trained as an art teacher and currently works with community recycling and environmental efforts. They are both former VFP board members.
Kerry Jacox
Kerry Jacox lived in Vermont for 15 years and worked as a VFP staff member from 1995 - 2001. She returned to Canada in 2002 to be closer to her family. Kerry worked as VFP's Placement Officer and US Program Coordinator, setting up new workcamp host organizations in the US. She attended and co-led VFP workcamps in Haiti, Maine, Vermont and British Columbia, and has visited several workcamp hosts in New England as a VFP advisor. During her years on staff Kerry attended meetings with our partner organizations abroad and represented VFP at the CCIVS Conference in Kenya in 2004. Kerry has been actively involved in volunteerism for many years focusing on HIV/AIDS issues and programs for children in Canada, the USA, Haiti and Russia. Kerry lives in British Columbia with her partner Ron, where they run a small fishing resort in a wilderness region.
Anne Kern
Anne Kern is a German/American with an eclectic mixture of skills, interests and idealism. Currently she is busy eating local foods, trying her hand at vegetable gardening, and hoping one day to raise backyard chickens. When not engaged in the effort of living sustainably, she can be found doing editorial work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing grants for nonprofit organizations, or correcting copy as a freelance editor and proofreader. Anne formerly worked at WGBH Educational Foundation, served on the Board of Directors of VFP, participated in workcamps in the US and abroad, and had time to travel the globe. Now, however, she is happily home-schooling a bilingual daughter with whom she explores the universe vicariously in her living room. Anne is a graduate of Brown University and earned a master's degree at the School for International Training in Vermont. She and her daughter welcome travelers into their home through the CouchSurfing network, create humorous stuffed animals for sale, and are looking forward to the day they can begin participating in volunteer projects together.
Jim Olinger
Jim works for RETN educational television in Burlington, VT, helping to promote, produce and train in the making of media of a socially positive/ non-commercial nature. He especially enjoys working with community members of all ages, assisting them with the production of programs that explore issues that matter to them, from their point of view. He has a BS in telecommunication production from Lyndon State College and has been associated with VFP for the last 10 years. He lives in South Burlington with his partner Meg and his two daughters, and enjoys many outdoor activities including skiing, camping and tennis.
Barbara Prose
Barbara attended two VFP workshops in the summer of 1982, one in Hungary and one in the Soviet Union. She spent the next summer studying the Russian language in Leningrad. She received a B. A. in Russian Studies from Brown University in 1984 and led a tour for the Council for International Exchange through the USSR in 1985. She became a licensed midwife in Texas and New Mexico in 1987 and lives currently with her husband and two daughters in Boothbay Harbor Maine where she used to practice as a midwife and currently teaches elementary school music. Barbara was ordained as an interfaith minister in 1999 and is attending graduate school at Bangor Theological Seminary. She is pursuing a degree in the feminist study of religion.
Eric and Tory Sonstroem
Anneka, Tory and Eric Sonstroem
Eric and Tory Sonstroem have been involved with VFP since 1993, when they participated in workcamps in Ireland and Wales. Since then, they and their daughter Anneka have continued to support VFP and to participate in workcamps abroad and in the U.S. They have hosted eight VFP projects in Indiana and in California. Eric and Tory are educators and Anneka is a high school student. They live in Stockton, California.
Louis A. Villaire
Louis did his undergraduate studies at Western Michigan University. He has undergraduate degrees in English, Alternative Energy Technology, and Environmental Science and Policy. Lou completed his Masters Degree in Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Lou completed his PhD in Political Science (Energy Policy) at Northern Illinois University this year. Lou's recently published doctoral dissertation is about state renewable energy policy. Lou has worked as an analyst for the Oil and Gas industry, the US EPA, and the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University. He currently lives in Grand Junction, CO with is wife and son, where he works in solar energy sales and design. Lou is a marathon runner, a bicycle commuter, and a member of Toastmasters International. Lou grew up in rural Southwest Michigan where he often visited the Great Lakes. Lou did his first workcamp at the age of 18 when he went to the former Soviet Union to Moldavia to participate in an international workcamp. In 1983 Louis then co-led one of the first VFP workcamps in Burlington, Vermont. Louis then organized workcamps in Michigan and in Colorado in the early 90's.
Curtis Washburn
Curtis holds a Master's degree in Sociology from the New School for Social Research and a Bachelor's in Economics from Fairfield University. He is a Ph.D.student in the Higher Education Administration program at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, focusing on the internationalization of Higher Ed. He participated in International Workcamps from 1989 to 1997, serving as co-leader of 11 different workcamps in Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Ecuador. Curtis also served as a Medium Term Volunteer for VFP's partners in Belgium (VIA-IJU) in 1996 and as a VFP Board member from 1992-1996. Currently he is living in Honolulu with his wife Eva, working at Chaminade University as Assistant to the Provost and Director of Advising.
Peter Coldwell and Matthias Weiter outside of the United Nations in 2006.
Matthias Weiter
Matthias was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1947. He holds an M.A. in engineering and economy of the University of Hamburg and received a scholarship for a post graduate course in International Development, before he joined the German Government in 1973. Since then, he served in various functions, institutions and countries in the field of development cooperation. His service missions took him to all parts of the world, spending longer periods of his career in Indonesia, Egypt, Yemen, Belgium and the USA. He speaks German, English, French and Arabic. He is married to Manuela Malaszkiewicz-Weiter, they have two boys, both adopted from Brazil. In his last job in the German Ministry of Cooperation and Development, Matthias worked as director of the Middle East Department. He now teaches international development studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and at several Middle Eastern universities. Matthias got in contact with the international youth movement when he joined the German boy scouts in the late fifties. He became a supporter of Volunteers for Peace from the very beginning through his long standing relationship with Peter and Penny Coldwell. From 1985 to 1988 he was entrusted by the German government to establish the European Voluntary Service, a joint initiative of France and Germany. He was elected into the advisory board of Volunteers for Peace in 2002.