FOUNDERS / FOUNDER'S BIOS
+ Founder's Bios
+ Stephan T. McGuire, Tree Media
+ Lauren Segal-Avenna, NextAid
+ Barry Leneman, Necessity Housing
+ Kristen Kosinksi, Samburu Project
+ Melanie St. James, Empowerment Works
+ Scott Fifer, Tunahaki Foundation
Stephan T. McGuire of Tree Media
For most of the past 8 years, Stephan has been a Producer with Tree Media Group. Stephan is the Associate Producer on the documentary '11th Hour', narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. He produced Woody Harrelson's Voice Yourself website portal and directed and producing a popular experimental short film called "The Green Pill". He co-scripted & produced the Guayaki Yerba Mate Corporate Demo CD. As a producer, he completed websites for The International Green Cross' Global Green, the 2000 Presidential Campaign Library for the Council on Foreign Relations, California 's Heal the Bay, as well as many other non for profit and yoga organizations.
Stephan began studying sustainable, earth restorative farming and living practices called "Permaculture" on the island of Hawaii in 2001 and in Costa Rica in 2002-2003. Permaculture techniques focus on making our communities healthy, culturally rich, and self-reliant models of integrated living.
[send an email to Stephan] top
Lauren Segal-Avenna, Co-founder and Director of NextAid
Lauren has chosen her role to create a brighter future for the orphans left behind in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. At the age of 16, while visiting Brazil, Segal was first exposed to the reality of inescapable poverty that is a reality for a large portion of the world's children. Upon returning, Lauren started an organization in her high school called Students for Social Responsibility. Determined to find solutions and having been influenced by the humanitarianism of LiveAid, she became inspired in her own activism and quest for social justice. Through earning a bachelor's degree from UCSB in Sociology, Lauren acquired an interest in political sociology and harnessing music as a vehicle for creating positive social change.
In 2000, when she was hired to help coordinate the largest outdoor, dance music event in Mexico's history, the Aca World Sound Festival, a historic benefit performance attended by 60,000 people. A percentage of proceeds from this event supported the Million Wishes Latin American Charity in the building of a kindergarten and a generous donation to an HIV orphanage in Acapulco.
Imagining the potential of the international dance music community, Lauren partnered with activist and lawyer Craig Keys to form NextAid in 2002. They combined their efforts and determination to help children in Africa (AIDS in Africa), as well as channel the potential of the dance community.
On her first journey to South Africa, Lauren found an outlet for NextAid to establish a sustainable presence. While coordinating a delegation from Southern California to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Segal took a day-trip to a remote township, Dennilton. There she met Cynthia Nkosi and Youth With a Vision, a group of resilient teen orphans who spread awareness and HIV/AIDS prevention through music, theater and dance. With the goal of teaching the community how to build a 'sustainable' center, for their use as a youth resource center and education facility, Lauren had established the link between sustainable development, curbing the devastation created by HIV/AIDS with the power of the global dance movement.
[send and email to Lauren]
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Barry Leneman, Founder of Necessity Housing
Barry Leneman, is the founding President of Necessity Housing and an advocate of sustainable solutions with 22 years of construction and teaching experience. Mr. Leneman co-founded and taught construction systems at the social action middle-school Topanga Mountain School and started the social justice Foundation for the Freedom of Expression.
His work with Necessity Housing has created the blueprint for a sustainable village currently being developed in Hammanskrall, South Africa, and continues to teach communities around the world how to use local materials to build durable housing in three days. In addition, he is developing a residential housing that incorporates all aspects 'rational development' including active and passive solar energy production and savings, water reducing and reclamation systems, permaculture landscaping, and climate responsive design. Mr. Leneman is an active participant in helping NextAid develop their eco-village child support center by bringing alternative building materials, appropriate technologies and techniques to the Dennilton center to further underscore its role as a model for future centers to be built throughout Africa.
[send and email to Barry]
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Melanie St. James, Founder of Empowerment Works
Melanie St.James, MPA, Executive Director/Founder
Social entrepreneur Melanie St.James has lived, traveled and worked in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. For the past 10 years Melanie has been devoted to understanding the evolutionary relationship between poverty, human security, and global sustainability. Years of research and interviews with people throughout Africa have convinced her that human empowerment and mutually supportive collaborations best foster human security. She has built EW as the primary vehicle to put this philosophy into action. read more
[send and email to Melanie]
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Scott Fifer, TunaHAKI Foundation [www.tunahaki.org]
Founding Member, CSAfrica
SCOTT FIFER is the Founder and Executive Director of the TunaHAKI Foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to sustainable orphan care. TunaHAKI's pilot project is the creation of a green, arts-based child centre in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. He is a Hollywood film and T.V. writer and was formally a New York City tax attorney and a U.S. Senate aide.
TunaHAKI Foundation empowers orphans and vulnerable street children in Africa to become self-reliant, thus ensuring basic human needs, including food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care and the right to a secure future. TunaHAKI Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit currently partnered with the arts-based TunaHAKI Centre for Child Development in Moshi, Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania which has rescued over 100 children from the streets and provided them with shelter, food, clothing, medical care, education, arts training, and job placement.
TunaHAKI believes that sustainable development is rooted in self-reliance, and we empower successful grass-roots organizations in Africa which are dedicated to the care of orphans and vulnerable children to stand on their own using sustainable best practices.
Scott Fifer, Executive Director [send an email]
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"In the world there is a new collective force of people mobilising around the issue of peace but linking it to the need to protect the environment.
But we must assert our collective vision and responsibility to shape that peace not only for our country but also for the whole of Africa." 1995
"It is not as if leaders do not understand the impact of the unjust political and economic systems which are promoting environmental degradation and promoting a non-sustainable development model.
When will such business be considered unacceptable in the world community?… Africa’s challenges are being tackled at different levels, and some successes have been recorded.
But not fast enough. The concepts of sustainable development, appropriate development models, and participatory development are not foreign.
We are aware that our children and the future generations have a right to a world which will also need energy, should be free of pollution, should be rich with biological diversity and should have a climate which will sustain all forms of life." 1991
"many conflicts, present and past, are waged over resources, whether land, forests, minerals, oil, water or seeds.
As the Earth's resources continue to be depleted through unsustainable use, poor management and exploitation, conflicts will flare more often, and will be more difficult to contain. Protecting global and local environments, therefore, is essential for achieving lasting peace.
It is critical that people around the world take action to reverse environmental degradation and its negative impacts on our lives and those of other species." 2004
Wangari Maathai
2004 Nobel Peace Prize
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