I support local efforts for change so people can empower themselves, wherever I live and visit. I use my resourses, my education, my personal connections to assist whomever I am focusing on.
Kangra District, India. I have visited for over a month each time, three times in the past 15 years. My daughter, Dr. Kim Berry and her partner, Dr. Mark Baker continue to do long term research in Himachal Pradesh, the state and I visit to support them by caring for the children, to visit with friends I have made there, to learn more about the people, especially single women. It is important to me to support grassroots efforts, not imposing my ideas of how things should be.
I want the single women of HP India to have land rights to lead a life of dignity and respect and to be independent citizens. I support their clear vision of the state granting 30 year leases on lands the state has legal right to, for farming in each district of HP.
In addition to raising a family and working outside the home, I have been a part of initiatives for social and environmental change over the last 40 years. I have worked on projects such as school integration in the 1970s in Atlanta, GA, working to ensure pregnant girls had the right to stay in school in Griffin, GA, supporting Title IX equal opportunity for athletics, coordinating widespread tree planting efforts in Suwanee, GA, aiding in a rescue of over 100 Haitian refugees in the Bahamas in the late 1990s, and forming an organization to sue Panama City FL for granting a permit to a developer to destroy bay wetlands in 2002. Inspired by the single women's movement in Himachal Pradesh, I am currently volunteering to help them realize their goal of gaining access to land rights (long-term lease) to forge lives of dignity and economic independence.
