Vanessa D'Amelio

LEAPed to Ethiopia, 2009

Bio

While a student at The Evergreen State College, Vanessa went to China for the International Conference on Women in support of The Grameen Bank. The following year, she traveled to Bangladesh to learn directly from Muhammad Yunus and the women borrowers. Since that time, she visited several additional countries and developed a strong interest in sustainable community development. Vanessa studied with architect Nader Khalili and learned how to build his super-adobe emergency shelters. This sparked Vanessa’s interest in how the principles of micro-credit and sustainable development can empower the increasing population of child headed households and displaced people. By focusing on sustainable community development, she hopes to form strong collaborative partnerships to preserve cultural pluralism and empower the voice and vision of individual communities. Vanessa is currently pursuing her Masters in Environment and Community at Antioch University through the Center for Creative Change.

LEAP to Ethiopia

As an extension of her graduate work and collected travel experiences, Vanessa took the LEAP to Ethiopia. Vanessa helped to create the Building Stories, Voicing Homes Project in collaboration with The Religious Teachers Filippini. Building Stories, Voicing Homes documents and shares the stories of AIDS orphans living in child headed households as well as to collaborate with these children to build a cluster of “super-adobes” - small, structurally sound, technologically appropriate mini-domes that provide a place of comfort and retreat for young orphans.

Learn more about Vanessa’s work in Ethiopia by visiting Vanessa’s travel blog.