Who we are

Katherine Selting: A former Sustainable Agriculture Peace Corps volunteer in a small, rural, indigenous community in Panama. During the past two years Kate has worked with cacao farmers, home gardens and fish tanks, and a women’s artisan group.  She grew up in Anacortes, Washington and later continued on to graduate from the University of Washington in 2007 with a degree in biology, with a focus on conservation and environment, and a minor in international studies. In 2008 she applied for a Keen Sustainability grant to start a bike trip across the U.S. supporting local food economies. Now the trip has been extended to reach from Panama back to the U.S. After completing her Peace Corps service in July 2010, she will embark on this adventure back, attempting to help a little more on her way home.

Check out Kate’s blog at: www.adventuresofpeacecorpsinpanama.blogspot.com.

Devon Fredericksen: A freelance journalist, Devon lives in Bishop, California, reporting the environmental beat for The Sheet, a weekly newspaper (www.thesheetnews.com), and other publications such as Eastside Magazine. She grew up in Olympia, Washington and graduated from Western Washington University in 2009 with degrees in environmental journalism and Spanish. After writing for and managing The Planet magazine in college, she became hooked on investigative environmental and social journalism. When she’s not writing and reporting, she works at a local independent bookstore. She recently completed the first step of training to become a certified crisis counselor for domestic violence and sexual assault, and is also a California-certified substitute teacher. Her media plans for the Cycles of Change bike tour are huge, and she hopes the trip will be the next defining step in her budding journalism career.

Check out Devon’s blog at: www.dfredericksen.blogspot.com

Melissa Nicklas Jacobs is finishing two years as a sustainable agriculture worker with Peace Corps Panamá in the central province of Coclé.  She works with her husband, Isaac, in a rural Latino community, focusing on soil health and conservation, rice cultivation, fish production, and entertaining and motivating a boat load of local kids.  Raised in N. Virginia, she was educated in North Carolina and has worked in various other states.  She gets mixed up when she says “home” but really she means Craftsbury, Vermont, where her tap root is anchored and where she and Isaac built their house prior to Peace Corps.

After receiving her degree from Warren Wilson College in “Culture Interpretations on Environment” (Human Studies), she worked with the National Park Service, the Nature Conservancy and U.S. Geological Survey in different areas of the country and all focused on botany, ecological management and research.  Prior to PC Panamá, Melissa was a very happy locally fed farmer managing the harvest, preparation and packing for a Vermont organic veggie farm.

Upon leaving Peace Corps, Isaac and Melissa will become the proud owners of an organic coffee farm.  This means she will be joining the Cycles for Change Bike tour in August after a month and a half of farm work.

Logan Aytes graduated in June from Western Washington University with a degree in History and a focus on U.S. environmental history. Prior to the trip, he was devoting most of his time to writing his senior thesis. It focuses on the nature of hunger in the American slaveholding south and how enslaved men and women contested slaveholders’ power through independent food production. His interests are very broad and his future vague. But surely it will bring some excitement and then graduate school, followed by more excitement.  He is an avid summertime bicyclist and has toured Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and especially southern Idaho, where his folks live. He volunteers as a tutor in the local GED review classroom and works at a local Bellingham organic grocery store.

Peter Pearsall is a freelance journalist-cum-short-order cook-cum-amateur naturalist from Seattle, Washington. He graduated from Western Washington University in 2009 with a degree in environmental journalism, and has had work published in the Planet magazine, the Ferndale Record-Journal, and Bellingham Alive magazine, among others. Currently stationed in Bellingham, he feels ready for a change, the twinges of wanderlust creeping up like growing pains through his bones.

Alyssa Cudmore grew up on a family farm in Dallas, Oregon.  She graduated from Western Washington University in 2009 with a degree in environmental policy and minors in economics and Spanish.  She was recently stationed in Portland working with a non-profit on housing discrimination and affordable housing in Oregon.  In the past, she has dipped her toes in agricultural land use policy, community organizing, natural resource policy, youth engagement, gardening, and journalism.  She hopes some of these skills may come in handy on the trip.  Potential future plans involve working abroad for the next year, and then heading back to the world of education for a law degree, specializing in tribal natural resource law or a graduate degree in natural resource management.  The long term ones are muddled, but whatever will ensue will involve doing something she loves in the pursuit of social and environmental justice for all.  In her free time she enjoys any activity involving being outside, traveling, learning, reading, wild edibles harvesting, writing, and is an avid bird and people watcher.

Janell Henry: As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama, Janell has been teaching organic agriculture, cocoa tree management, and baking and knitting classes over the past two years. She has lived amongst royalty, with a king of the Naso Teribe tribe, and brought him cookies. She has fended off numerous attacks of biting ants, intestinal parasites, pits of super suctionous mud, and even flood waters. She has often made a fool of herself before a willing audience.

Before Peace Corps Janell studied agricultural engineering at The Ohio State University and worked as an environmental engineering consultant. She grew up feeding baby calves and bucking hay bales on her parents’ dairy farm in rural Ohio. She dreams of continuing the family farming tradition.

Janell’s blog:  janellchristine.blogspot.com

Kathleen Fraser: As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Panama, Kat has spent the past two years working in an indigenous village teaching business skills to small farming groups including coffee growers, beekeepers and women’s artisan groups. She grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and then attended the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina where she earned two bachelors degrees in international business and Spanish with a minor in Latin American and Caribbean studies. She worked for two years for an international investment firm in New York City where she became convinced that business has the power to address social and environmental challenges, while also delivering financial returns.

Before moving to Panama, Kat had been dreaming about riding a bicycle through Central America after her Peace Corps service, so she is thrilled to have met such an amazing group of friends to share this experience with, all while continuing to serve communities and organizations along the way. Kat will be riding with the group until mid-August and then will leave to pursue a master’s degree in environmental economics and policy with a focus on sustainable business strategies at Duke University.

Check out Kat’s pictures and Peace Corps blog:

www.flickr.com/photos/53265254@N00/

kathleenfraser.blogspot.com