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SHARON SMITH
Sharon Smith is the Program Director for the New Leaders Initiative and Brower Youth Awards at Earth Island Institute. These programs honor young environmental leaders in North America for their outstanding activism and achievements. Sharon has worked extensively with student networks to achieve victories pushing banks out of dirty energy projects and loggers out of old growth forests. In addition, Sharon has led youth on extended wilderness backpacking and cross-country bike touring trips in the United States. She launched her career in environmental advocacy in 1999 with a year-long fellowship with Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing.
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BEN HOLLAND-ARLEN
Ben earned his bachelors degree in Event Management and Multi-Media Performance from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and has extensive experience in cooking, marketing, fundraising, and event management. He now focuses on food justice, obesity prevention, and sending a message of healthy eating and exercise to our expanding-waistline nation, interests that stems from his struggle with obesity. Currently, Ben is working as administrator for Kids Cooking For Life, which teaches kids the importance of cooking and nutrition. He also works with the non-profit organization The Leadership Investment Fund that provides small grants and mentorship to grassroots non-profits in the Bay Area.
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LETICIA DURAN
Le
ticia Duran is an Oregon native who began her work with youth at the age of 15 when she worked as an assistant to a summer youth program. She currently works as program manager for a non-profit organization offering individual development accounts. In her off time, she is a certified mediator and teaches conflict resolution and personal development skills to incarcerated youth.
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SERGE BAKALIAN
Serge Bakalian is a San Francisco-based filmmaker, writer and theatre manager. He has years of experience in nonprofit management, and a spirit of entrepreneurship. Trained as a chemist, Serge has worked for several major NGOs, including Greenpeace International and the F.A.O. of the UN. He’s been a founding member of organizations such as the Glendale Greens, the Cedre Foundation and theGreen Alliance.
Serge is currently the Managing Director of Golden Thread Productions, a theater company dedicated to exploring the cultures and identities of the Middle East. As a writer and filmmaker his works have spanned both fiction and nonfiction, currently producing the feature-length film, Default: the Student Loan Documentary. Serge has worked on a wide range of issues and campaigns, notably on defending the biodiversity of the world’s food supply against genetic modification. His work and activism have led him to many parts of the world, most extensively throughout the Middle East and Latin America. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.S. and M.S. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
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SARAH FARAHAT
Sarah Farahat is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She volunteers as a DJ with KBOO Radio and lends her creative services to a variety of organizations around town. Farahat works closely with folks organizing for peace and social justice around the world. She is currently focused on the visual campaign of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s apartheid state. Farahat holds Bachelor’s Degrees in Psychology and Fine Art as well as being a certified Acupuncture Detoxification Specialist. She has worked with the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Washington, DC, painted murals from Los Angeles to Chiapas, Mexico, and worked on an organic seed-saving permaculture farm in Guatemala.
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Elana Isaacs
Elana Isaacs is an Oakland-based educator, artist, and facilitator with a focus on social justice and youth leadership. She brings 20 years of experience designing arts-based curriculum, leadership opportunities, and professional development programs for resilient youth, collaborating with schools, camps, detention centers, and social profits to support young people’s voices and their passion to change the world.
She directed an HIV prevention peer education and social marketing program for homeless youth called Gorilla Theater, served as the Drama Director at Beyond Borders Camp, and co-created a music education curriculum based on unlearning prejudice for Head Start and Oakland elementary schools called “Let’s Sing and Learn.” For the past three years she has directed the East Bay Jewish Community Teen Foundation, working with youths from around the Bay area to leverage privilege, and collaborate with partner communities to work towards equity, sustainability, peace, and justice.
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Amanda Morrison
Amanda is an educator, counselor, activist and writer. She has a Master’s degree in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She now teaches in the School of Undergraduate Studies at CIIS, where she employs her training in somatics, expressive arts, and eco-psychology to encourage students to engage creatively in an interdisciplinary course of studies. She was recently published in the book Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. Amanda is engaged with many causes, including local food and farming, climate change, and voter outreach. She is a regular practitioner of yoga and meditation.
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ERIN FIELDS
Erin Fields is an advocate for social justice and youth empowerment. She was the co-chair of her college’s Social Justice Coalition where she organized events and letter writing campaigns around issues such as AIDS in Africa, N. Korean political prisoners, the importance of buying fairly traded global goods, and more. One of the issues she is most passionate about is anti-adultism — supporting youth in recognizing and strategically challenging the societal structures that limit their relations to power.
She has worked to support youth as a summer school English teacher, a support counselor in an alternative classroom, a teaching assistant at a Montessori school, an after school group leader, a tutor, and a nanny. She is currently a student at California Institute of Integral Studies in the Social and Cultural Anthropology department, seeking an MA in Gender, Ecology, and Society where she studies the mechanisms of structural oppressions. She is excited to be working for YEA Camp as an opportunity to support a community of activists of all ages.
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LUKE JANES
Luke Janes is a credentialed math and science teacher, and received his masters in education at UC-San Diego, where he did his thesis on social justice and outdoor education. Luke has extensive training in nonviolent communication, including co-counseling training; in theater of the oppressed; Challenging White Supremacy and anti-oppression; restorative justice; and more. He is certified Wilderness First Responder. Luke has also done extensive solo travel around the world and has practiced meditation for several years, including five 10-day Vipassana retreats. Luke has taught math and science, as well as English in Chiapas, Mexico, and in Korea. He has worked at several summer camps and is inspired by the opportunity to put his extensive training and experience into practice at YEA Camp.
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Laine Forman
Laine Forman is a San Francisco-based artist, and educator, who has worked with a variety of populations including at-risk youth, prison inmates, and immigrants. She is currently a preschool teacher, and is working toward a Masters in Drama Therapy. Laine is a skilled actor and has worked with a variety of theater companies including Bread and Puppet and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Wild Goat Theater Project, a community-based theater company using participatory arts for personal and social transformation. Laine was trained in Theater of the Oppressed by its founder, Augusto Boal.
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