By dedicating my life to discovering innovative methods and approaches to development work - so people in rural Africa take more control of improving their own lives. In 1991 I co-founded A Self-help Assistance Program, ASAP Africa - a grassroots organization effectively run by local citizens in Zimbabwe and more recently Malawi.
Mutare, Zimbabwe
A world that acknowledges and addresses the fact that abject poverty and the human suffering it creates is inexcusable. That humanity must work together as one, first to achieve the MDGs and then to build on that success - we have such enormous potential!
After earning a BS in biology, I joined the Peace Corps at age 30 to teach high school science and math in Swaziland, where I met my soul mate. Tom Arsenault and I created A Self-help Assistance Program (ASAP Africa) after Peace Corps and moved to Zimbabwe for what we thought would be one year - to establish a sustainable program. We lived in Zimbabwe for 11 years and returned to the US in 2005. Today ASAP Africa's program in Zimbabwe continues to grow and works to alleviate poverty and improve education. In 2008 ASAP replicated our program into southern Malawi.
