Takako Mino
Discover Voice
I aspire to help young people discover their potential and realize happiness through human-centered education. In 2010, I introduced the Public Debate Program as a tool for youth empowerment through a pilot project with the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) in Uganda and Kenya. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College with a Bachelor's degree in International Relations, I have returned to Uganda to strengthen and expand the debate program. I will work in partnership with FAWE to introduce the program to schools in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. I am honored to collaborate with Peace in Focus and Jamaa to empower Burundian youth.

Alicia Carlson
My love for photography began while growing up in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. Living in a rural area provided an opportunity to photograph a constantly changing landscape and variety of wildlife. While living there, I also mentored teens through a non-profit organization called Youth to Youth. I combined my interest in photography and social service by earning a B.S. in broadcast journalism from Emerson College. I work as an assistant director at a local television station, freelance as a photographer, and provide public relations services to small non-profits and artists.

Danielle Martin
Boston Program Facilitator
I work with organizations to create holistic communications and organizing strategies for integrating participatory media and digital storytelling tools into educational, advocacy, and development projects. As a media consultant, I have worked as an after-school youth media facilitator, and curriculum developer, supporting Peace in Focus as well as MassIMPACT, the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club Computer Clubhouse, StoriesforChange.net, and as an AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer at UMass Boston’s Transmission Project. In 2009 I graduated as a Master in City Planning from MIT, and continue to partner with MIT@Lawrence and the Center for Future Civic Media. All this comes together on my blog: VerdeSmoke.com. 

More about me: I VALUE VOICE...individual, authentic, unrestrained, equal and celebrated. I VALUE CHANGE...making some sort of impact...using my hands and my brains and a camera…and probably some geeky homegrown tools. I VALUE COMMUNITY…deep in it...on the ground...surrounded by that dynamic noise of the personalities who value the same things I do.

Cristina Remond
Soular Power
www.soularpower.net

Gabe Ruane
www.gaberuane.com
Graphic Designer
Gabe Ruane is a freelance graphic designer/art director living in San Francisco, California. His time is split between client work and a slew of client-free and profit-less side projects in design, art, architecture, technology and culture. Gabe's involvement with Peace in Focus began as the designer of this very website, and will continue in many ways big and small in the future.

Maanav Thakore
Youth Development Consultant
Maanav Thakore is a second generation Indian American whose life work is devoted to shifting dominant paradigms side-by-side with young people. He has worked as a youth organizer in jails, schools, community organizations, and on the street. He has lived, worked, and learned in all corners of the country and has always been led by his heart.   He currently works as the National Mentoring Manager with YouthBuild USA. It is his sincere belief that all social change must begin within. A resident of Dorchester, he also does field work on political campaigns and is a working musician and deejay.

Adrien Tuyaga
‘I was in the middle,’ recalls Adrien Tuyaga. ‘Each side wanted me to join them and participate in the violence. I thought I would be killing my mother if I joined the Hutus and betraying my father if I joined the Tutsis. This is how I started to think of ways to pull people together.’ Born in 1966 to a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father, Adrien has spent his entire life working to overcome ethnic divisionism in Burundi. In 1994, the year after President Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated, Tuyaga founded Jamaa in an effort to organize youth leaders to join a movement of peace and reconciliation in Burundi. Through dialogues, sporting events, and cultural displays, Jamaa succeeded at raising awareness in Burundi of the need for inter-ethnic harmony, respect, and solidarity among Burundi’s younger generation. Since 2008, Adrien and Jamaa have partnered with Peace in Focus to implement creative conflict transformation programs for Burundi’s underprivileged youth population.

Jamaa is a Burundian non-profit association founded in 1994 by Adrien Tuyaga and Abdoul Niyungeko in order to build peace and relationships between warring factions in Burundi. Among its long list of innovative peacebuilding programs, Jamaa has facilitated dialogue between youth leaders on both sides of the conflict through football matches, joint retreats, dialogue sessions, community marketing campaigns, and trauma counseling. In 1999, the “Gardons Contact” (Let’s Keep in Touch) initiative was launched by Jamaa to facilitate healthy relationships and regular contact between former adversarial youth groups. In 2008, Jamaa and Peace in Focus formed a partnership to bring together Burundi’s vulnerable youth population in an effort to promote solidarity, creative peacebuilding, and community leadership. Among our past and current participants are former child soldiers, orphans of HIV/AIDS and the war, refugees, internally displaced, and under-served youth of all backgrounds. Alumni of our Burundi programs have launched a monthly youth peace journal, entitled “Akarusho +,” and continue to design and implement innovative community peacebuilding projects, including a youth-led radio station in Bujumbura.

www.rootsandshoots.org
Roots & Shoots engages and inspires youth through community service and service learning. Founded by Dr. Jane Goodall in Tanzania in 1991, today Roots & Shoots has tens of thousands of members in nearly 100 countries, all working on local and global community service projects. The Roots & Shoots program is about making positive change happen—for our communities, for animals and for the environment. Young people identify problems in their communities and take action. Through service projects, youth-led campaigns and an interactive website, Roots & Shoots members are making a difference across the globe. Roots & Shoots and Peace in Focus have been collaborating since 2009.

www.sellsagency.com
The Sells Agency is an Arkansas-based full-service advertising, marketing, and public relations firm. Since 2008, the team at Sells Agency has collaborated with Peace in Focus on logo design, program marketing, and organizational identity.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein