Advisory Board

Jeanne Barclay 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, where she is currently on leave from her job as coordinator of pre-departure seminars for development assistance personnel.

VFP President, Peter Coldwell and Matthias Weiter, VFP Advisory Board Member outside of the United Nations in 2006.

Bob Belenky 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. (11/07)

Mary Brook speaks Spanish fluently and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas in the department of Geography. She is currently writing her Ph. D dissertation about international development projects focusing on indigenous resource management in the Caribbean region of Nicaragua, where she lived for two years. Mary began participating in international workcamps with Volunteers for Peace in 1988. She has traveled in 23 countries and has completed six international and seven domestic workcamps.

Peter Hagerty and Marty Tracy 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 lived in Vermont for 15 years and worked as a VFP staff member from 1995 - 2001. She worked as a Volunteer Placement Officer and as the US Program Coordinator, setting up new workcamp host organizations in the US. Kerry attended and co-led VFP workcamps in Haiti, Maine and Vermont 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. 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. She enjoys a wide range of outdoor activities and spending time with her grandchildren. (01/07).

Ella Jewell: Ella earned a Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Pre-Medicine from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Ella has worked in the public health industry in various capacities for 7 years. She has done extensive work in global women's health and her volunteer activities include trips abroad to Africa and Mexico as well as epidemiological research in breast cancer. (11/07)

Anne Kern is a German/American who has lived for several years in Switzerland, Southern France, West Germany and Paris, where she became involved with CCIVS at UNESCO and the volunteer movement. She is trilingual (English, French & German) and has participated in workcamps in Tunesia, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Anne helped organize and lead two workcamps in the US. She is a graduate of Brown University with a BA in Comparative Literature and holds a Master's degree from the School for International Training in Vermont. At present, Anne works writing closed captions for the hearing impaired at the caption center of WGBH-Channel 2 in Boston.

Jim Olinger works for RETN educational television in Burlington, VT, helping to promote and produce media of a socially positive/ non-commercial nature. He especially enjoys working with teens, 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 four years. In prior years he was the chef/owner of a catering company, specializing in international home cooking. He has been a tennis instructor and enjoys many outdoor activities including skiing and caving.

Barbara Prose 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.

Louis A. Villaire did his undergraduate studies at Western Michigan University. He has undergraduate degrees in English, alternative energy, and environmental science and policy. Louis has an MA in urban and environmental policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently a PhD political science at Northern Illinois University, where his research centers around local governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He grew up in rural Southwest Michigan where he often visited the Great Lakes. He now lives in Chicago where he is member of the Stone Soup housing Cooperative. He is an amateur athlete and trainer. Louis 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 holds a Master's degree in Sociology from the New School for Social Research and a Bachelor's in Economics from Fairfield University. Curtis 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. Curtis served as a VFP Board member from 1992-1996. Currently, Curtis is living in Honolulu. He is working at Chaminade University as Director of Academic Advising and Retention and he finds time to take graduate classes in International Relations at the University of Hawaii.

Matthias Weiter 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. Matthias now works as director of the Middle East Department of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Bonn and teaches International Development Relations at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. 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.

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