Tag Archives: teaching

June 12, 2017 · 12:25 pm

Sierra Leone Trip – Families Without Borders

Terri Khonsari, my daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman, and I are traveling to Sierra Leone in a few weeks to visit the Families Without Borders school Terri manages in Makeni. Jessica and I will be making technical and business presentations in Makeni and in Freetown. Terri and I are both long-time Mentors for the TechWomen program. We have been discussing this trip for years.

More about Families Without Borders:

We believe in building communities from within through education and empowerment of local youth. We begin by recruiting top students from disadvantaged families. We enroll them in a four year Bachelors Degree program of their choice complemented by a full servant leadership and personal development program. The program includes: advance computer skills, communication skills and financial management.

On Saturday, John, Matthew, Jessica and I joined TechWomen IdaRose Sylvester (with her husband Neil Hendin) and Samera Edwards at the Families Without Borders annual fundraising Gala. We enjoyed good company, good food, and good music. Jessica even learned some drumming.

Here are Hamid and Terri Khonsari with four TechWomen Fellows from Sierra Leone at the Families Without Borders Gala in 2015:

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Images Copyright 2015-2017 by Katy Dickinson

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Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Jessica, John, Matthew, Mentoring, Paul, Sierra Leone, teaching, technical women, TechWomen

June 7, 2017 · 2:00 pm

Using Twitter to Create Black-positive Monument List

When friends and family find out I use Twitter daily, they often ask: “But what is it good for?” I finally have a good answer to this!

On 30 May 2017, I responded to a tweet from Brittany Packnett, who has almost 75K Twitter followers and describes herself as: “#BlackWomenAtWork. Educator. Activist. Speaker. Writer. @BuildLovePower creator. @TeachForAmerica VP. #CampaignZero Co-Founder. Obama Appointee. Thoughts mine.” We asked for suggestions for a list of Black-positive monuments in the US. Within a short time, there were dozens of replies and suggestions.

That’s something I love about Twitter – getting the word out very fast and collecting information and suggestions fast from a vast and often well-informed audience.

Here is the list (so far) of Black-positive Monuments in the US.* What would you add?

Muhammad Ali – Louisville, KY.
Arthur Ashe – Richmond, VA.
Crispus Attucks — Boston, MA.
George Washington Carver — Newton County, MO.
Frederick Douglass – Harlem, NY.
W.E.B. Dubois — Nashville, TN.
Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable – Chicago, IL.
Medgar Evers — Lorman, MS, and another in Jackson, MS.
Billie Holiday (by African-American sculptor James Earl Reid) – in Baltimore, MD.
Barbara Jordan – Austin, TX.
Martin Luther King — Washington, D.C., and another in Birmingham, AL.
Joe Louis — Detroit, MI.
Thurgood Marshall – Baltimore, MD.
John Mitchell – Richmond, VA.
Olympic Black Power – San Jose, CA.
Rosa Parks – Washington, D.C.
Adam Clayton Powell — Harlem, NY.
Colin Powell – New York, NY.
Remember Them – group monument, including: The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Maya Angelou, Susan B. Anthony, Ruby Bridges, Cesar Chavez, Chief Joseph, Sir Winston Churchill, Frederick Douglass, Shirin Ebadi, Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, Coretta Scott King, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Harvey Milk, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Oskar Schindler, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, The Unknown Rebel of Tiananmen Square, Elie Wiesel, and Malcolm X – Oakland, CA.
Tupac Shakur — Atlanta, GA.
Harriet Tubman — Harlem, NY, and another in Boston, MA.
Maggie Walker – Richmond, VA.
Malcolm X — Harlem, NY.
Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers – Wilberforce. OH.

*updated 12 June 2017 to include Thurgood Marshall, John Mitchell, and Maggie Walker.

Updated 29 June 2020 to fix links.

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Images Copyright 2015-2016 by Katy Dickinson

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Filed under News & Reviews, Politics

Tagged as blogging, teaching

April 11, 2017 · 11:53 am

TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation

I was part of the TechWomen Delegation to Kyrgyzstan from 23 February – 4 March 2017 in Central Asia. We spent a week giving talks and making presentations to women, girls, technical startups and the STEM community. 35 participated in the Delegation – from the USA, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and of course Kyrgyzstan. In addition to the mentors from the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area and the Fellows from Central Asia, our Delegation included staff from the Institute of International Education and the US State Department.

Three of us had an accidental tour of Istanbul getting to Kyrgyzstan since our flight connections didn’t. We hired a driver during our day of waiting for the next Bishkek flight and saw Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and other remarkable locations in that beautiful and cosmopolitan city. Since there is a Travel Warning for Turkey, we avoided crowded areas.

Each Delegation member had the opportunity to give several professional presentations. In addition to general mentoring sessions, my presentation topics included: Successful Mentorship (at the Kyrgyz State Agrarian Academy), Crowd Funding (part of the “Silicon Valley Experts Symposium” hosted by the US Ambassador, Sheila Gwaltney and the Kyrgyzstan Information Technology State Committee), Women in Tech: Challenges and Opportunities (at StartUp Tuesday), Social Media Marketing and Professional Networking (at the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University), and Challenges and Opportunities in STEM Careers (in the American Corner, for high school students). After the presentations were over, a small group of us rented a bus and drove to see the remarkable 9th century minaret called the Burana Tower near Tokmok.

The day I arrived in Bishkek was when my mother died. I knew when I left that this was a possibility even though I thought (and hoped) she would be with us much longer. I had made all of the preparations in advance and both of my brothers were with her when she died. I saw continuing my participation in the Delegation as a tribute to the woman my mother raised me to be – but it was hard to be away from home at such a time.

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Filed under Mentoring Standard, News & Reviews

Tagged as Central Asia, Eleanor, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mentoring, teaching, technical women, TechWomen, Uzbekistan

February 23, 2017 · 11:00 am

Barbara Merrill in Tanzania

Barbara Merrill describes herself in her email signature as a “Certified Ergonomist and A Very Good Friend” – and she is indeed both. Barbara is also a parishioner at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and a person with albinism (PWA).

In these last two capacities, Barbara celebrated her retirement by traveling to Tanzania to help albino children and their families. She worked with a Cerebral Palsy Clinic, visited the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Step by Step school and other schools in Arusha, participated in an Albinism Conference to educate village leaders in Ngorongoro Crater, and visited an Asante Miriamu Foundation clinic and children’s camp in Kigoma and Kabanga.

This month, Barbara gave a report to St. Andrew’s called “Trip to Tanzania” about her 5 November 2016 – 12 December 2016 travels. Some facts she presented about Tanzania:

70% of the population is rural
Capital Dar es Salaam and Dodoma
68% below poverty level
Large percentage of population under 15 years old Generally high birth rate about 5 per woman
High infant mortality rate – nutrition, early and frequent pregnancies, inadequate maternal health.
Tourism is about 20% of the Tanzanian Economy

One of the most interesting of her slides for me was called “Myths About Albinism”

PWAs are ghosts
Mother slept with a white man
They don’t die just fade away
Magical powers
PWAs are evil
Albinism a curse or punishment
PWAs have pink eyes
Albinism is contagious

Thanks to Barbara for her dedication, teaching, and great heart!

Images Copyright Barbara Merrill 2016

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Tagged as Africa, Episcopal church, Tanzania, teaching

January 18, 2017 · 9:41 am

TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation, and Uzbekistan Trip

In February-March 2017, I will join the TechWomen Delegation to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. I look forward to working Yelena Filipchik and other TechWomen Fellows in Bishkek, spending a week giving talks and making presentations to women, girls, technical startups and the STEM community. After the week in Kyrgyzstan, Saida Yusupova has invited me to Tashkent in Uzbekistan for a few days to help give Technovation training on mentoring and leadership.

So far, I have been focused on getting my flights sorted out. Spending hours on the Hipmunk travel site, I discovered that (depending on the day of the week) you can economically get to Bishkek from either San Francisco or San Jose, flying through Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai, Frankfurt, or Beijing. My flights will go through Dubai. Just travel time (not counting layovers) will be about 20 hours each way.

It cost about $1,000 less to buy two round trip tickets: California-Kyrgzstan-California and Kyrgzstan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgzstan than to book a single trip. This means I have to transfer my bag from airline to airline myself but the layovers are very long, so there is time for that. I am still thinking about what to do during the unavoidable 19+ hour layover in Dubai coming home.

I am also reading up on what to see in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on the Lonely Planet website. The TechWomen Delegation orientation meeting by IIE is next week.

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, Mentoring Standard, News & Reviews

Tagged as Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Mentoring, teaching, technical women, TechWomen, Uzbekistan

January 18, 2017 · 7:28 am

Introducing Harpswell Women

Today I ran a blogging workshop online for 18 women, of whom most were in Cambodia with the Harpswell Foundation school in Phnom Penh. The women are college students in Psychology, International Relations Agronomy, Mathematics, Medicine, Communications, and Dentistry, among other study disciplines.

Harpswell in a Nutshell

“We operate two dormitory and leadership centers for university women in Phnom Penh that provide free housing and food, leadership training, and critical thinking skills to some of the brightest and most ambitious young women in Cambodia while they are attending universities. Our students attend 20 different universities in Phnom Penh… Our alumnae are becoming a powerful wave that will help move Cambodia into the future.”

Some of their stories:

Srey Pov is one of the Harpswell women who is working on a video project in her home village of Siem Reap. She says that: “…the video project brought me closer to my past dreams, and that it has given me the opportunity to share my story with other people.”
Somaly Soun is from Sihanoukville, which is a beautiful fishing village on the beach where they eat a great deal of seafood. Her mother is a housewife. Somaly is a first year student studying to be a Dentist. She says: “I want to tell the world about my community and how they live.”

We created this blog post together. I learned of the Harpswell school from Heather Ramsey, Trish Tierney, and Amanda Schwartz of WAKE International. I am delighted to meet these impressive students!

My “How to Blog: Best Practices” slides are on Mentoring Standard’s website.

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, Mentoring Standard, News & Reviews

Tagged as Cambodia, teaching, technical women

January 17, 2017 · 5:22 pm

What the Presiding Bishop Said

“You are doing it. Keep going.” is what Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in Salinas, California, on 7 January 2017. I was a member of the panel that asked questions after his keynote. From my notes, my opening question was:

“The Silicon Valley has a skewed population. In the high tech world where I work, there are about 25% female, 4% Latino, and 2% Black in the computing professions. In Elmwood Jail where I lead an Education for Ministry seminar each week, men and women are separate and there are 42% Latino and 29% Black. I feel like I live in two worlds. What can we do to reach out, to bring this divided community together?”

When Bishop Michael answered “You are doing it. Keep going.” I heard that the answer lay in outreach ministries like mine – and in telling people about that work. Individuals with a foot on both sides can connect a community.

It is a good but a little scary to have an experimental program succeed so well. I have been thinking a great deal about what Bishop Michael said – and about what to do next. The Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, CIC, and EfM have strongly backed our jail-based seminar during the last year. My first step was to talk with the CIC Chaplain for Elmwood, and then with the EfM program at the University of the South – School of Theology, about starting an additional class at Elmwood. They support expanding the program. Now to find more funding!

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Filed under Church, News & Reviews

Tagged as Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy - CIC, Episcopal church, Jail, Silicon Valley, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, teaching, technical women, Theology

Tag Archives: teaching

Sierra Leone Trip – Families Without Borders

Using Twitter to Create Black-positive Monument List

TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation

Barbara Merrill in Tanzania

TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation, and Uzbekistan Trip

Introducing Harpswell Women

What the Presiding Bishop Said

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