Blog #53: Midura, Ron-Gonzales

We awarded 15 Volunteer Service Awards this spring; we are introducing 2 or 3 of them each week.  Kristen Midura is spending 6 months volunteering with Green Empowerment as a support engineer for their partner AsoFenix, a local non-governmental organization in Nicaragua whose work is to build empowerment and resilience in rural communities with renewable energy systems.  The project team anticipates that this work in Nicaragua will reduce the food deficit caused by the dry season and droughts and will improve crop yields over rain-fed agriculture by three to four times.  The families will be able to grow a diverse array of fruits without having to cut down any more forest.  Sue Ron-Gonzales received her second Volunteer Service Award grant to continue work with Tomorrow’s Stars which she began in 2013, when she started a girls club for students in Elmina, Ghana.  This year she will leverage her training as a literacy teacher when she return to Ghana to establish a cross-age tutoring program with club members being trained to tutor younger girls.  This program will provide tutoring twice a week during the school year as well as during vacation school.