Duke University's Hart Leadership Program has selected its 2007-08 fellows, recent graduates who are placed in organizations around the world to do research and fieldwork on pressing policy issues.
"The process of this leadership development is an encounter with complexity," said Duke professor Alma Blount, director of the Hart Leadership Program. "The fellows will be working with organizations around the world that are confronting a variety of difficult social and political problems."
The fellows will begin their programs in July and return in late spring 2008. During their time abroad, they will send letters home, which will be available online at the homepage for the Hart Fellows Program.
The three fellows are:
-- Seyward Darby, of Greenville, N.C., a Benjamin N. Duke Scholar who graduated in May with a major in English and a minor in political science. Darby was involved with "The Chronicle," Duke's independent daily student newspaper, serving as the editor in her junior year. In 2004, she interned at the Center for Community Safety in Winston-Salem, where she helped manage a Community Outreach Partnership Center project. During the summer of 2006, Darby traveled to Trang, Thailand, where she taught English to children at a local public school, and then backpacked across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
As a Hart Fellow, Darby will work with Transitions Online, a Prague-based media development organization that aims to improve the state of journalism in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. The organization publishes an award-winning online magazine and offers training for journalists throughout the region. Darby will review the agency's training activities, as well as write, report and blog.
-- Cassandra Phillips, of Denver, who graduated in May with a major in public policy studies and a minor in economics. In the summer of 2005, Phillips volunteered at the Leave a Little Room Foundation in Gulu, Uganda, where she implemented a malnutrition food project in coordination with four area non-government organizations. At Duke, she was active in the Center for Race Relations, serving as an assistant director for Common Ground, a diversity retreat, and as co-director of the Peer Facilitation Training Program, which seeks to sustain dialogue on campus regarding race relations and diversity. She also volunteered with an organization in Durham that teaches Spanish-speaking adults English and practical daily living skills.
As a Hart Fellow, Phillips will work with Homeland in Battambang, Cambodia. Homeland aims to improve the standard of living and well-being of vulnerable children and families. Homeland provides various services for street children and families, including caring for formerly trafficked children, working with children at risk of coming into conflict with the law, and facilitating home-based care and group counseling sessions for people living with HIV/AIDS.
-- Brian Wright, of High Point, N.C., a Benjamin N. Duke Scholar who graduated in May with a major in environmental sciences and policy. During the summer of 2005, he conducted documentary research on a nomadic family with whom he lived in Bayankhangor, Mongolia. He has also worked at the Conservation Council of North Carolina and at Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment, a Winston-Salem-based community activism organization. He is co-founder of Step into the WILD, a program for local, disadvantaged high school youth led by Duke undergraduates; the program features team-building activities, rock climbing and a three-day "Outward Bound"-style excursion.
Wright will work with the Institute of Social Order (ISO), based at the Ateneo de Manila University in Manila, the Philippines. ISO, the oldest non-government organization in the Philippines, implements community-based coastal resources management in several coastal municipalities through its Social Transformation and Grassroots Empowerment (STAGE) Program. In evaluating STAGE, Wright will interact closely with community members and local government officials at the program sites.