SIT Representatives Near You

Do you live near these places?  SIT representatives will be there!  If you are an alum, a prospective student, or a friend of SIT by your own definition, please come say hello!

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February

Did you stop by and say hello at these events this week?

1st, Monday.  New York City:  Idealist.org Global Volunteering  Fair

2nd, Tuesday.  Atlanta:  Morehouse & Spellman College Grad School Fair

3rd, Wednesday. Philadelphia:  Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fair

4th, Thursday. Washington, DC: Idealist.org Global volunteering Fair

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20th, Saturday.  San Diego:  Lessons from Abroad

22nd, Monday.  Chicago: Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fair

23rd, Tuesday.  Boston: Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair

24th, Wednesday.  Storrs, CT: Careers for the Common Good

25th, Thursday.  Los Angeles: Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fair

26th, Friday.  Wellesley, MA: Not for Profit Fair

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March

1st – 5th, Monday – Friday. Chicago: Comparative & International Education Society

4th, Thursday.  Craftsbury Common, VT: Environmental Career and Internship Fair

6th, Saturday.  San Francisco:  Lessons from Abroad

11th – 13th, Thursday – Saturday.  Dubai: TESOL Arabia

19th- 21st, Friday – Sunday.  Little Rock, AR: National Student Conference on Service, Advocacy, and Social Action

25th – 27th, Thursday – Saturday.  Boston: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

26 – 28th, Friday – Sunday.  Indianapolis: Green Fest

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April

10th – 11th, Saturday – Sunday.  San Francisco: Green Festival

13th, Tuesday.  Minneapolis:  Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair

20th, Tuesday.  Cleveland:  Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair

22nd – 25th, Thursday – Sunday.  Santa Clara, CA: California TESOL

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May

22nd – 23rd, Saturday – Sunday.  Chicago: Green Festival

Monday, May 31 – Friday, June 4.  St. Louis: NAFSA Association of International Educators

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Register now for Open House on campus in Brattleboro

Friday, March 12

Friday, May 7

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Alumna Saskia Meckman ‘Women Expatriates: A View of their own’

Saskia Meckman, PIM 57

Saskia Meckman is an alumna of SIT Graduate Institute, with a degree in Intercultural and International Management.

Women Expatriates:  A View of Their Own

By Anne P. Copeland, Ph.D. and Saskia Meckman

Imagine Joan and John. Both are regional sales directors for their multinational corporations. Both have done well in their jobs and both are on the fast track in their companies. Both are married and have young children. And both are, at the moment, sitting at their computers on their company intranet, about to add their names to the pool of candidates interested in an international assignment.

Joan and John’s paths may sound similar. But from the moment they click their ‘Submit’ buttons, their international experiences are likely to be different. That is, they’ll be different to the extent that Joan is a “typical” woman and John a “typical” man. Women and men tend to have different international experiences, for three reasons: (1) their colleagues and customers – both at home and in the new country – treat them differently, (2) they play different roles within their families in ways that will affect their job performance, and (3) they have different personal skills to be tapped in the new country.

Alumnus Kyle Foster: ‘Yemen: Isolated and Misunderstood’

Alumnus Kyle Foster joins us today with an article written for the blog ‘Explorer Mikael Strandberg’.  Kyle is a PIM 57 with a degree in International Management.

Yemen:  Isolated and Misunderstood

Kyle Anthony Foster and me at a kat chew in Sanaa, Yemen. He is one of the biggest personalities I have met. And very knowledgeable of yemen. He speaks fluent Arabic, is married to a Yemeni from Mukalla and has at least one child.

Guest writer number 5 is Kyle Anthony Foster from Nebraska, who is currently living in Yemen, and have been doing so for the last ten years or more. He is one of the biggest personalities and characters I have come across, a true story teller, survivor, human being and adventurer of the old sorts. Everything happens to this guy! Not one boring second with him. He is married to a nice Yemeni from Mukalla and they have a lovely daughter together. He knows the ins and outs of Yemen. An important voice to listen to, these days of painting Yemen as one of the most dangerous countries in the world!

I am writing to you from a long, white sands beach under swaying palm trees on the south coast of Arabia, in Yemen. The sun is setting over the Arabian Sea in a blaze of orange and gold.  These days my sun also rises in Yemen.  In fact, Yemen has been the place I call home for most of the last ten years.  I met Mikael here last year and we became immediate friends; sharing a love of adventure and expanding our horizons through travel.  It might surprise you to think of some of the world’s most pristine and beautiful beaches in Yemen.  It might also surprise you to know that the country is not a giant sand pit but a mountainous country, incredibly green in the rainy season, with incredible gorges and vistas throughout. So, when Mikael asked if I might write something about Yemen I grabbed paper and pen and headed straight for the beach.  It is here, where the blue waters of the Arabian Sea meet the white beaches and rocky headlands of Arabia that the story of Yemen and its people begin.

Adjunct Faculty Eric Bass wins highest honor for the Arts

Eric Bass is an adjunct faculty member focusing on the Arts and Theater for Social Change concentration.  For more information about this concentration within the Conflict Transformation degree, click here.

Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts 2010

We are pleased to announce that Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, founders of Sandglass Theater in Putney, VT will receive Vermont’s highest honor in the arts, the Governor’s Award for Excellence. The world-renowned puppeteers will be celebrated in a ceremony at the Vermont State House on Thursday, February 11 at 7 PM. The free public event will include a performance by Sandglass Theater and friends.

SIT Farm – the video

Articles on the SIT Farm:

SIT Farm Wrap-Up: Year One

Farm Manager Steve Hed, PIM 61: A Personal Note on the SIT Farm

SIT Graduate Institute Campus Community Farm Works to Create a Sustainable Food Source

Professor Paula Green: Conflict Transformed

Paula Green is founder and Executive Director of Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, a US-based NGO focused on international conflict transformation, inter-communal dialogue, and reconciliation. She serves as Professor of Conflict Transformation at the School for International Training, where she directs CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures), an annual Peacebuilding Institute and Graduate Certificate Program for peacemakers from around the world.

A Welcome to Diana Francis’ reflections: Conflict Transformed
by Paula Green
Summary:
This new generation missed out on the US civil rights movement, where nonviolent direct action was employed brilliantly and strategically in the service of change. Now it’s time for all of us to respond to the ultimate challenge of how warfare dominates our discourse.

Like the author of Conflict Transformed [2], I have participated in movements for peace and justice as they arise and fall away in our own time, including those for civil rights and women’s liberation in the US. We served together on the Steering Committee of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, where we cheered the Filipino nonviolent revolution, watched the Berlin Wall tumble, and identified ourselves as supporters and trainers for active nonviolence, inspired by the quest for justice and the matching of means and ends.  At that time, less than twenty years ago, there were few graduate degrees in peace and conflict, and we seemed to be activists and advocates in nonviolent social change rather than professionals in peacebuilding.

Food for Hope: Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice

Food for Hope: Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice
Friday, January 1, 2010

(Fair Trade Federation) Kalinga Unoy, Ulikan Red, Tinawon Fancy, Tinawon White—these are the names of rice grown in the mountains of the Cordillera region of the Philippines, where the villages are so remote that travelers hike to reach them. It is a land of awesome beauty, historic rice terraces, and indigenous people engaged in a new model of economic development.

And it brings us a story about food, hospitality, culture, and hope.

The story begins with Mary Hensley. Hensley was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Cordillera in the late 1970s. After working as a social worker, travel agent and organic farmer, she enrolled in the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT, where her coursework in social entrepreneurship inspired a return visit to the Cordillera region almost 30 years after her Peace Corps service.

Alumnus Kakuta Ole Maimai Hamisi in ‘Maasai warriors to teach about life in Africa’

Kakuta Ole Maimai Hamisi is a PIM 64, with a degree in Sustainable Development.  He graduated in 2008 with a capstone on Maasai Youth: Careers at the Margins.

Sam Boyar, 5, and Norah Weitkamp, 3, visiting Woodland Park Zoo with their grandparents, are taught the rules of Mancala by Kakuta Ole Hamisi Maimai, who is here from Maasailand to teach zoo visitors about Africa. Looking on are, from left, Sammy Kiako Sipoi, Kenneth Sokoine Ntalamia and Parsitan Ole Parsaloi. Andy Rogers / P-I

Maasai warriors to teach zoo visitors about life in Africa

By KATHY MULADY
P-I REPORTER

Saturday, April 28, 2007
Last updated 12:16 a.m. PT

In sort of a reverse safari, four Maasai warriors are braving Seattle this summer to help visitors at Woodland Park Zoo understand the culture of people who live on the African Savanna, caring for goats and cows, moving every few days in the dry months to find water for their herds.

In the coming weeks, they’ll tell visitors stories of their frightening encounters with lions and leopards, and of wielding spears to protect their animals.

But in Seattle, they have already encountered a different kind of extreme experience.

Think Costco. At dinnertime.

Agus Hernawan, SIT Graduate Student, Takes Action

When a series of earthquakes struck Indonesia in September of 2009, Agus Hernawan, a student of social justice at the SIT Graduate Institute, grasped the opportunity to turn classroom theory into practice.

Agus was born in Sumatra and went to high school in Jakarta. After graduation, he spent a few years working in a factory in Tangerang, an hour outside of Jakarta.

“There were so many labor movements at that time in Indonesia,” he says. “Many of the labor leaders were captured by the military.”

When the situation in Tangerang became too dangerous, he returned to Sumatra to study anthropology and labor literature. For the past decade, Agus has worked as a labor organizer in rural areas of Sumatra and Java. He uses popular education workshops to help farmers and peasants build self-reliance.

In January of 2009, Agus came to the SIT Graduate Institute on a Ford Foundation fellowship to learn more about the global struggle against poverty and injustice, but also to share about his own experiences back home.

Open House, and Other Alternatives to Visit SIT Graduate Institute

In today’s blog post, Mary Kay Sigda shares ways to deepen your knowledge of the SIT Graduate Institute through personal or virtual visits to campus.

Open House
Register for our next Open Houses on Friday March 12, 2010 and Friday May 7, 2010! Come visit our beautiful campus and take the opportunity to meet and chat with our faculty, admissions staff and current students. Attend a class, learn about financial aid options and discover how SIT can help you develop your skills and knowledge for an international and intercultural career. The day begins at 8:30 am with coffee and muffins, and ends at 4:00 pm with a reception.