“The opportunity to spend two years living in villages and small towns across India through my ICWA fellowship was life-changing, in small and large ways. I had the time and space to examine the issues that I cared deeply about, to connect actual experiences through my immersion in life in India with larger policy questions, and to explore the country and the issues that appeared before me in a way that simply isn’t possible in most other opportunities. ICWA’s commitment to investing in people who have the potential to lead and contribute to international affairs and understanding is unique, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a fellow. My fellowship experiences helped me to develop my understanding of both international and domestic migration, and my ability to lead and contribute on these issues today.”
   –Pramila Jayapal

PRAMILA JAYAPAL
India (1995-1997)

Pramila is the founder and Executive Director of OneAmerica (formerly Hate Free Zone), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the fundamental principles of democracy and justice through building power in immigrant communities in collaboration with key allies. Since its creation in 2001, OneAmerica has grown into one of the largest and most influential immigrant rights organizations in Washington State and in the country, providing leadership on national and statewide campaigns around immigration reform, due process and civil rights issues, and immigrant integration. OneAmerica is the recipient of numerous awards for its courageous community organizing and policy work, including City of Seattle's Civil Rights Award, the Washington Bar Association's Access to Justice Community Leadership Award, the Unitarian Universalists Holmes-Weatherley Award, and the Ecumenical Leadership Award from the Washington Association of Churches. In 2008, Pramila was appointed by Washington Governor Chris Gregoire to serve as Vice Chair of the Washington New Americans Policy Council, which advises the Governor on immigrant issues.

Pramila appears frequently on local and national radio and television shows and is a featured speaker around the country to diverse audiences on issues of immigrants and immigration. She is the author of Pilgrimage to India: A Woman Revisits Her Homeland (Seal Press, 2000), and her articles and essays have been published widely in numerous magazines and newspapers. Her previous work includes over twenty years in both social justice and private sector fields.

An activist and writer, Pramila has been actively involved in international and domestic social justice issues for over 12 years, working across Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as domestically with immigrant and refugee communities in Washington state. From 1991-95, she was the Director of the Fund for Technology Transfer at PATH Seattle, overseeing a $6 million revolving loan fund for socially responsible health projects in developing countries. From 1995-97, Pramila was awarded a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to live in India and write about development and societal issues. From 1997-2001, Pramila was a consultant to several organizations on immigrant and refugee issues, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections Initiative. Prior to that, Pramila also spent several years on Wall Street in investment banking. She currently serves on several boards, including as Vice Chair of The Rights Working Group and the Executive Advisory Board for Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry.

Pramila has a Masters in Business Administration from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and a B.A. from Georgetown University in English and Economics. Pramila was born in India, and raised in India, Indonesia and Singapore. She is the proud mother of a 12-year old son, born in India during her ICWA fellowship. 

NEW BOOKS

James G. Workman was an ICWA Fellow in South Africa from 2002-2004. He is an award-winning journalist, foreign correspondent and writer. Jamie has prepared speeches for statesmen on four continents. As a 'Drought Doctor' he has advised businesses, aid agencies, civic associations, environmentalists and government departments on water scarcity and climate change adaptation. He lives in San Francisco.

Heart of Dryness
How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought

By James G. Workman

“We don’t govern water. Water governs us,” writes James G. Workman. In Heart of Dryness, he chronicles the memorable saga of the famed Bushmen of the Kalahari—remnants of one of the world’s most successful civilizations, today at the exact epicenter of Africa’s drought—in their widely publicized recent battle with the government of Botswana, in the process of exploring the larger story of what many feel has become the primary resource battleground of the twenty-first century: the supply of water.

The Bushmen’s story could well prefigure our own. In the United States, even the most upbeat optimists concede we now face an unprecedented water crisis. Reservoirs behind large dams on the Colorado River, which serve thirty million in many states, will be dry in thirteen years. Southeastern drought recently cut Tennessee Valley Authority hydropower in half, exposed Lake Okeechobee’s floor, dried up thousands of acres of Georgia’s crops, and left Atlanta with sixty days of water. Cities east and west are drying up. As reservoirs and aquifers fail, officials ration water, neighbors snitch on one another, corporations move in, and states fight states to control shared rivers.

Each year, around the world, inadequate water kills more humans than AIDS, malaria, and all wars combined. Global leaders pray for rain. Bushmen tap more pragmatic solutions. James G . Workman illuminates the present and coming tensions we will all face over water and shows how, from the remoteness of the Kalahari, an ancient and resilient people is showing the world a viable path through the encroaching Dry Age.

Walker & Company, NY.
On Sale August 11, 2009
ISBN: 0-8027-1558-3
ISBN 13: 978-0-8027-1558-6

To Order
www.walkerbooks.com
www.heartofdryness.com/Home

Click here to watch a brief interview on the book

Read an excerpt from the book

or view a 20 min. documentary on the Bushmen situation.

Gregory Feifer was an ICWA Fellow in Russia from 2000-2002. Gregory is National Public Radio’s Moscow correspondent. He was educated at Harvard University and lives in Moscow with his wife, Elizabeth and son Sebastian.

The Great Gamble
The Soviet War in Afghanistan

By Gregory Feifer

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. During the last years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent some of its most elite troops to unfamiliar lands in Central Asia to fight a vaguely defined enemy, which eventually defeated their superior numbers with unconventional tactics. Although the Soviet leadership initially saw the invasion as a victory, many Russian soldiers came to view the war as a demoralizing and devastating defeat, the consequences of which had a substantial impact on the Soviet Union and its collapse.

Feifer’s extensive research includes eye-opening interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. Parallels between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are impossible to ignore—both conflicts were waged amid vague ideological rhetoric about freedom. Both were roundly condemned by the outside world for trying to impose their favored forms of government on countries with very different ways of life. And both seem destined to end on uncertain terms.

A groundbreaking account seen through the eyes of the men who fought it, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.

Available January 6, 2009 HarperCollinsPublishers Hardcover: $27.99 ISBN: 9870061143182

browseinside.harpercollins.com

More Books           

Pooja attended Harvard as an undergraduate, and then worked for the Wall Street Journal for a few years. She graduated from Harvard Law School. She was appointed Harvard Law School Satter Human Rights Fellow in 2007 and worked as an attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, which advocates and litigates on behalf of Haiti’s poor. As an ICWA Fellow, Pooja will explore Haiti more deeply and write more broadly about the country.

Elena will be living in Siberia, studying management of natural resources and the relationship between Siberia's natural riches and its people. Previously, Elena was a Legal Fellow at the University of Washington's School of Law, at the Berman Environmental Law Clinic. She has clerked for Honorable Cynthia M. Rufe of the federal district court in Philadelphia, and has practiced commercial litigation at the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Elena was born in Moscow, Russia, and has volunteered for environmental non-profits in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, and has received a bachelor's degree in political science from Barnard College.

Eve is a New Republic staff writer interested in character and in how individuals fit themselves into new or changing societies. Through that lens, she will be writing about medicine and politics in the new South Africa. At the New Republic, she covered the first Democratic Congress since 1992 and the 2008 presidential race; her book reviews have also appeared in The New York Times. She graduated with a degree in political science from Yale, where she also studied music.

Ezra is interested in economic and political changes in Central America. He is an ICWA fellow living in Guatemala where he will write about the country’s rapidly changing economic structure and the effects on its politics, culture and people. He was formerly the deputy city editor for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, a staff writer for Springfield (Mass.) Republican and a Pulliam Fellow at The Arizona Republic. He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston.

Suzy will be writing about politics and religion in Turkey. A former editor at the New York Observer, her work has also appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, and other publications. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999.

Derek will be exploring the social and cultural impact of economic change in India. Previously, he was a Fulbright scholar in India at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. He has worked as a foreign policy research coordinator at George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies and as a political organizer in New Hampshire. Derek graduated with a degree in religion from Columbia University.