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Six with ties to CSB and SJU receive fellowships
July 12, 2009
Four recent May graduates from the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, and Saint John’s University, Collegeville, have received Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellowships from the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Center.
CSB graduates Kathryn Green and Johanna Grefsrud, and SJU graduates Brandon Drazich and Nikolas Nadeau received the fellowships. Elizabeth Super, a 2008 graduate of CSB, and Paul Walters, a 2005 graduate of SJU, also received fellowships. A total of 39 people were selected to fellowships this year.
The fellowship program is designed to promote social justice by providing practical training in the varied aspects of human rights work worldwide.
• Drazich graduated magna cum laude from SJU with a degree in English. As a fellow, he will join Pax Christi International in Brussels, Belgium, for the summer. Drazich’s work will focus on human rights research and advocacy; peace spirituality and peace theology; and non-governmental organization fundraising.
• Green graduated from CSB with degrees in peace studies and environmental studies. She will complete her fellowship with the Karenni Development Research Group (KDRG), a coalition of 10 Karennia Community Based Organizations. As an intern with KDRG, Green will translate KDRG reports into English, network with other human rights non-governmental organizations in Thailand, assist in organizing training and workshop sessions for human rights activists and participate in all planned KDRG campaign projects.
• Grefsrud graduated summa cum laude from CSB with a degree in peace studies. She will complete her fellowship with ISAIAH’s Great River Interfaith Partnership of St. Cloud, Minn. Grefsrud hopes to explore the role a human rights framework can play in community organizing and to use community organizing to promote human rights.
• Nadeau graduated summa cum laude from SJU with a degree in English. As a fellow, he will be working at Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (G.O.A.’L.) in Seoul. Nadeau’s work will focus on G.O.A.’L’s Dual Citizenship Campaign, Korea’s ratification of the Hague Convention on International Adoption, and meetings with the Korean National Assembly. He has been awarded a 2009-10 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant position in South Korea.
• Super graduated from CSB in 2008 with a degree in political science. She will complete her fellowship at the Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Super will work on the Inquiries Observation Project, with which she will monitor and evaluate governmental inquiries into the deaths of defense attorneys in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a period roughly from the late 1960s to 1998.
• Walters graduated from SJU in 2005 with degrees in psychology and English. As a fellow, he will be working at a nonprofit organization called The Friends of Ngong Road in Nairobi, Kenya. The organization provides education and support for Nairobi children living in poverty whose lives are affected by HIV/AIDS so they can transform their lives.
Over the past 20 years, the Human Rights Center has sponsored 426 interns and fellows to work with human rights organizations in more than 80 countries.