December and January Highlights at ACI
Annual Board Meeting: ACI’s Board met in Dakar on December 5 and 6, 2009. The total number of Board members rose to nine with the addition of Law Professor Babacar Kanté and YMCA International Alliance Coordinator Simon Lazarre Badiane. Eight of the nine Board members attended the Dakar meeting.
Study Abroad: The last 2009 academic trimester ended in December with presentations by our Beloit students on their HIV/AIDS advocacy course and by Beloit and Kalamazoo students on their «Dakar in Transition» course. The Beloit students have since gone home and the Kalamazoo students stay on through February 2010 to complete their rural visits and senior projects.
In December and January ACI received visits from Josh Moore, Assistant Director of the Office of International Education at Beloit College (and former ACI Study Abroad Coordinator) and Narda McClendon, Assistant Director of the Center for International Programs at Kalamazoo College in December. Josh also participated as a member of a delegation from ISEP (International Student Exchange Program) made up of Rob Whittemore, former Senegal PCV (Marssassoum in 1973) and now Professor of Anthropology at Western Connecticut State University and Jennier Precht, Senior Director of ISEP for Africa Programs and Crisis Management, to explore possibilities for a new program with Université Gaston Berger in 2011. Professor Nicole Ass-Rouxparis, Chair of the of Lewis and Clark Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures arrived to help us launch this year’s Lewis & Clark program.
The new trimester began in January with the arrival of programs from University of Pennsylvania (5 students who will spend a month at ACI before going up to Gaston Berger in Saint Louis for their studies), nine students from Williams College doing a special 20 day program on video development and editing. They are working with ACI’s local community based organization partner ANBEP in Yeumbeul and Matam – under the Direction of Professor Kiaran Honderich ; and 10 students from Lewis and Clark who will be with us at ACI through April 24. ACI also organized Cultural Orientation sessions for 2 groups of 25 CIEE students on Jan 21 and 22..
ACI’s French and Wolof language programs welcomed independent students from Norway, Brazil, Holland, France and the US in December and January.
ACI’s Health Department published a two page newsletter on ACI’s innovative experience with multisectoral, integrated management (GIM) of the response to HIV and AIDS on the Regional level in Senegal. To read the newsletter in French, click here.
Personnel: Diariétou Coly our receptionist at Baobab 2 bu bees left for a three month leave in France at the end of January. Filling in for her will be our documentation center volunteer Mamadou Kassé. Marième Seck Diallo, our admin and then study abroad assistant also left at the end of January after 7 years at ACI for a new job with USAID in Richard Toll. After a process of recruitment, ACI chose Rama Sow Niang, formerly of Suffolk University in Dakar as her replacement. Finally, volunteer Cheikh Badji has joined our team for an internship in computer maintenance working closely with our information technology guru Ibrahima Diallo.
In December we celebrated the marriage of our head accountant Rokhaya «Daba» Sy to Mr. Babacar Tall followed on January 1 by the in-house marriage of Moustapha Dieng, caseworker in ACI’s health department, to Maty Ka, assistant to our longtime administrative coordinator Marième Gueye !
