There and Back Again

Tuesday, April 10th, 3:00-4:30pm

A UCSB alumni, Dr. Jason Prystowsky has made a career out of delivering healthcare to underserved populations in locations such as Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antarctica, Sudan, and the West Bank. Now a local emergency medicine physician through Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, Dr. Prystowsky tells the numerous stories of his winding journey that brought him back to Santa Barbara. Dr. Prystowsky's talk will focus on the wide-range of health disparities he has seen all over the globe and will shed some light on  the larger social injustices that cause disproportionate health outcomes. The talk will also be accompanied by a short presentation by a representative from a local non-profit that Dr. Prystowsky is the current medical director of, Doctors Without Walls. This accompanying talk will address how to apply the humanitarian principles that Dr. Prystwosky learned internationally to local health disparities. 

Jason Prystowsky attended University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied both philosophy and biology. He then went on to get a medical degree and public health degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. Jason trained in emergency medicine at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA, where he served as chief resident and a faculty member while doing an ethics fellowship. Jason spent 2 years as the medical director of the medical student run Open Door Community’s Harriet Tubman Free Clinic. After leaving Emory University, he worked on both the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona, and on the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota. In the global arena, Jason has worked in Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antarctica, and worked for Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in Sudan doing nutrition, vaccination campaigns, obstetrics, TB, kala-azar, tropical medicine, and surgical trauma. Jason most recently worked in the West Bank with Loma Linda University and USAID, helping the Palestinian ministry of health develop emergency healthcare infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and train emergency physicians and nurses. Jason embraces the Doctors Without Borders tradition of temoignage and speaks out about what he and other MSF volunteers have seen as doctors. He shares the stories of triumph and challenge about the clinical and public health impact of social injustice, poverty, and social inequalities. Jason is currently clinical faculty in emergency medicine at Loma Linda University in addition to being an emergency physician at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He is adjunct faculty at University of California at Santa Barbara and is co-instructor of DWW-SBSM annual UCSB underserved medicine course. He currently is the team leader for the DWW-SBSM communications and the interim medical director.

LiNK: Liberty in North Korea

Tuesday, April 10th, 8:00-9:15pm

IV Theater 2

This Global Awareness Week, LiNK's CalWest Nomads (traveling representatives) will be presenting The People's Crisis, a documentary following the stories of four refugees from their escape into China and along their journey to freedom.  The film also offers a comprehensive overview of the North Korean people's crisis, featuring interviews with North Korean refugees who have escaped, expert analysis, and insight into some of the little-known grass-roots changes that are happening inside the country.  Following the film, the Nomads will speak more deeply about LiNK and opportunities for audience members to get involved!  


Liberty in North Korea was created in 2004 when two passionate individuals learned about the atrocities happening in North Korea and felt a burden to share with the rest of the world.  Educating a group of college students and young leaders about the crisis, together they formed LiNK with the hope of spreading awareness and effecting real change. The organization quickly grew and became a movement of activists empowered by the stories of refugees and motivated by the urgency of the issue. LiNK's work focuses on awareness through mobilizing the grassroots and telling these stories of hope and survival. We meet with governments, NGOs and institutions to advocate for the North Korean people, while working directly with refugees through a network of shelters in China and Southeast Asia - protecting, educating and assisting them to eventually find freedom and empower them to live new lives.

The Shape of Water

Wednesday, April 11th, 5:30-8:00
North Hall 1006

THE SHAPE OF
WATER (narrator: Susan Sarandon; narration co-written by Edwidge Danticat) interweaves intimate stories and compelling footage of Khady, Oraiza,
Bilkusben, Dona Antonia, Gila - living in Senegal, Brazil, India, and
Jerusalem. The women:
spearhead rainforest preservation (rubber-tappers in Brazilian rainforest);
sustain a co-operative of 700,000 rural women (world's largest trades union, India);
promote an end to female genital cutting (women abandoning this practice, Senegal);
oppose war and the occupation of Palestine (Women In Black, Jerusalem);
maintain Navdanya farm (Himalayan foothills) to further biodiversity and women's role as seed keepers

THE SHAPE OF
WATER offers fresh insights into the complex realities and passions of these
unsung visionaries creating a more just world.                                                                                                                                                                           Kum-Kum
Bhavnani is Professor of Sociology. Her research interest lie within
development, feminist and cultural studies. She has published a number of books
and articules including Taling Politics
(1991, Cambridge University Press), Shifting
Identities Shifting Racisms (Sage 1994: co-edited with An Phoenix), Feminism and 'Race' (2001, Osford
Univesity Press) and Feminist Futures
(Zed 2003: co-edited with Johan Foran and Priya Kurian). In 2006 she completed
a feature documentary film, THE SHAPE OF
WATER (narrated by Susan Sarandon) which took four years to complete and
spans three continents. Her newest film NOTHING
LIKE CHOCOLATE premiered in 2012 at the Santa Barbara International Film
Festival.

Dirty Energy

Thursday, April 12th, 8:00-9:30pm

IV Theater 2

On April 20th, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico taking the lives of 11 workers and sank as millions of barrels of oil poured into the ocean creating one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Dirty Energy tells the personal story of those directly affected by the spill who now struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the economic devastation and long-term health risks. A story too often glossed over by the mainstream media and ignored by those sent to Washington to represent the will of the people, not the corporations.

The fate of the Gulf region and its inhabitants is largely unknown. The systematic failures of BP and the Federal Government to properly confront this environmental calamity with honesty and integrity have had powerful consequences. Sadly the human cost has been greatly underestimated and hidden from the public. Still today, the people of the Gulf are fighting to preserve their endangered way of life. This is their story.

For more information visit http://www.dirtyenergymovie.com/

Solutions for a Cultivated Planet

Christian Balzer

Tuesday, April 10th, 5:30 - 6:30
IV Theater 2

Global food demand is expected to double by the year 2050, when the global human population will have reached 9-10 billion people and the average person will be more wealthy and demand more food than today. Meeting this immense food demand will have dire environmental implications - unless agriculture is intensified in sustainable ways. Negative environmental effects of agricultural development include deforestation, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing, transport, and fertilizer application, and groundwater pollution. Recent research has shown that it is possible to feed the world in 2050 while greatly reducing these factors, by following five guidelines: 1) Stop agricultural expansion in tropical rainforests, 2) close "yield gaps" on underperforming croplands through agricultural intensification, 3) use fertilizers and other "inputs" more strategically, 4) shift diets towards less meat and dairy and more plant protein, and 5) reduce food waste. 

Christian Balzer was born in Providence, RI, and grew up in Weinheim, Germany. He studied Physics, Mathematics and Biology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, then transferred to St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN where he graduated with a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies in 2008. He then spent one year working as a researcher at the University of Minnesota with Dr. David Tilman. During this time, he conducted research on global agricultural trends and their environmental and economic implications. This work has resulted in two papers that he has co-authored: Solutions for a Cultivated Planet, which was published in the journal Nature in October 2011, and Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture, which was published in the journal PNAS in December 2011. He is currently a third year Ph.D. student in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB. When he is not doing research, Christian enjoys surfing, hiking, snowboarding, backpacking and playing the guitar.

Worldhealer, the organization, it's global mission and goals.

Roxana Bonderson

Friday, April 13^th, 5:30 – 6:30
IV Theater 2

Learn about the innovative emerging nonprofit called Worldhealer, sponsoring UCSB’s Global Awareness Club, supporting interns to create their own programs, one of which is Global Awareness Week.  Worldhealer was founded by young Santa Barbara local Roxana Bonderson, whose vision starts in Santa Barbara and encompasses the entire globe. She will talk about surprising facts about true poverty and the extreme socio-economic divide in Brazil, how urban favelas differ from those in smaller, developing communities, and Worldhealer’s approach to creating systemic change within the community. Worldhealer’s comprehensive global program, called the Studio, is a reproducible model similar to a community center, which offers supplemental education and nutrition to school children, vocational programs to adults, incentive programs, and improvements to the living environment. These efforts aim to increase the opportunities for all members of the Studio Program to become competitive participants in an increasingly globalized world, while uniting deeply stratified communities across geographic and socio-economic boundaries.

Roxana F. Bonderson is an active member of the humanitarian community as the author and designer of several non-profit proposals for development projects within emerging countries. Along with two degrees in architecture, she is specialized in urban design and global studies with an emphasis in sustainable development, global management, marketing and intercultural communications. She speaks English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Farsi. Beginning in her undergraduate years, Roxana took every opportunity to travel extensively on her own, as well as studying abroad and work in Italy, Germany, Cuba and Brazil.  In the course of these experiences, she impressed upon herself not only how fortunate we all are to live in the United States but how astounding it is that such masses of humanity elsewhere continue to live in poverty due to the simple lack of opportunity or support.  Being educated as an architect, she also took careful notice of how the living environment and urban fabric of a place can affect the inhabitants. Being trained as an educator, she observed how the lack of schooling narrows the horizon of an individual’s ability to dream of better things. All of these experiences added to her growing need to make an impact on the lives and environments of those who do not have as much as we do and has led to the creation of her nonprofit organization, Worldhealer, Inc.

Wireless Networks in Developing Regions: Internet for the Next Three Billion

Elizabeth Belding

Thursday, April 12th, 5:30-6:30pm
IV Theater 2

Access to communication plays a pivotal role in the socio-economic development of any nation. The past few decades have witnessed revolutionary changes in communication technology. With a growing range of new digital communication technologies, services and applications, information access has become a key component of people’s lives. While on one hand the Internet revolution has played a pivotal role in the development of economic, social, financial and educational sectors of the industrialized world, it has also created a “Digital Divide” that separates the affluent and developed nations from the developing and under-developed regions of the world.  

Fortunately, there are a number of on-going efforts to bridge this digital divide, and the majority are using wireless networks to do so.  In this talk, we will discuss some recent efforts to deploy wireless networks in developing regions.  We will discuss our 2011 analysis of an operational wireless network in Macha, Zambia, focusing on the network's utilization and ability to meet user needs.  Based on conclusions from this study and our analysis of the network's shortcomings, we will briefly describe key components of our VillageNet architecture, an on-going project designed to bring wireless connectivity into the homes of rural residents.  As part of this work we will mention ImmuNet, a new project designed to improve uptake and coverage of childhood vaccinations in developing regions.  

Elizabeth M. Belding is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elizabeth's research focuses on mobile networking, specifically network analysis and solutions for developing and under-developed regions.  She is the founder and director of the Mobility Management and Networking (MOMENT) Laboratory at UCSB.  Elizabeth is the author of over 100 technical papers related to mobile networking and has served on over 60 program committees for networking conferences.  Elizabeth served as the TPC Co-Chair of ACM MobiCom 2005 and ACM MobiHoc 2007, as is currently on the steering committee for ACM NSDR.  She has served on the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and currently is on the editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Magazine.  Elizabeth is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.  See http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ebelding for further details.