| Tom Furtwangler developed Sahaya's Tambaram Pediatrics Project, (www.tambaramkids.org). He works for the University of Washington as the Director of Cascade Health Communication Group, a media production group in the School of Public Health, and Manager of Strategic Communication at the International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH). He manages the development, production and distribution of educational media on HIV and other health topics worldwide, with particular emphasis on Africa, the Caribbean, and southern India. He lives in West Seattle with his wife, author Lyanda Lynn Haupt, and their six-year-old daughter Claire.
Tom's e-mail is tom (at) tambaramkids.org
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Adele Moussas , M.D.
I was first drawn to Sahaya by the beautiful hand embroidered cards.
Learning about the women who make them, I became curious about the other programs sponsored by Sahaya and READ. What made me decide to join Sahaya and eventually become a Board member was the direct connection, the direct help I could be to these people on the other side of the globe. Wanting to connect even more with them spurred me to go to India to visit the people benefiting from our sponsorship and see the programs in action.
The villagers won my heart as can only happen when interacting one on one.
I am grateful for my training as a Family Practice physician because this knowledge helped me participate in presenting HIV/AIDS awareness information, which is desperately needed in these villages. If you feel any stirrings of desire to help others, I encourage you to
honor that desire and join us or do work for the good of others in your local community.
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| Elisabeth Sherwin is a reporter at The Davis Enterprise (California). She is a member of the Uman (Ukraine)-Davis Sister City Project. She has traveled widely throughout Europe and has visited China and several Eastern European countries. For more information on Elisabeth's writings, click here .
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Karl Kruppis a Community Health Advocate for Greenaction Health & Environmental Justice where he campaigns for poor communities impacted by toxic waste, pollution from electricity generation, and industrial pollution. His volunteer work has taken him to India, where he worked with organizations providing aid to survivors of the Bhopal disaster, and worked on HIV education and research programs in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Krupp is currently enrolled in a Masters in Public Administration program at San Francisco University.
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Dr Purnima Madhivanan, M.P.H., is a physician by training from India who received her degree in Epidemiology from UC Berkeley in 2003. She was a Fogarty fellow at Brown University studying HIV epidemiology in women. As a Fogarty scholar, she is currently pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology at the Berkeley School of Public Health. Prior to that she managed a clinic for HIV infected women and children at YRG CARE, Chennai, India. She serves as a consultant with many community based organizations and is fluent in English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil
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Khonnie Phouanglasy and Rino Dizon
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Mirriam Rafiq , M.P.H., is a bicultural Pakistani-American, born in Karachi and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She completed a master's degree in public health in International Health and Development from Tulane University, specializing in monitoring and evaluation, health policy, and international health systems management. She is interested in social epidemiology and the cultural, socio-economic, and religious aspects of health and disease. In 2002 she worked in Tamil Nadu, India on a Horizons/Population Council funded operations research study at YRG CARE, a project partner in the Perambalur Education and Prevention Program (PEPP). Since then she has been implementing clinical and behavioral research with underserved communities at the University of California, San Francisco, and since 2006 is working as Program Officer for PATH in Hanoi, Vietnam. Mirriam serves as a member of the board of directors, part of the grant writing team, and is the Monitoring and Evaluation consultant for the PEPP project.
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Koen Van Rompay , D.V.M, Ph.D.
Born and raised in Belgium, I came to Davis, California, in 1989 and have been doing HIV/AIDS research at the University of California. In 1997, I became involved in India, which led to the start of Sahaya International, as described elsewhere (click here). I spend most of my free time on the daily management of Sahaya International, and feel that I am learning so much about the world and the values in life that really matter.
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