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.