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© 2012 BarbHowe.com - All rights reserved.

Life/work

 March 2, 2013

I’m a writer based in Washington, DC, but originally from a small town in central Florida. I studied English at the University of South Florida and Political Science (International Relations) at the University of Florida.

I have lived and worked all over the Americas including Colombia, Chile, Guatemala and Costa Rica. I speak English and Spanish and love working in multi-lingual, multi-cultural environments. Besides managing a short-term rental unit in DC, I also help non-profit organizations with strategic communications campaigns.

Here is a summary of my life’s work:

 

BA English Literature, University of South Florida, 1998

MA International Relations, University of Florida, 2006

Experience:

  • Real Estate Property Management. Manage, maintain and support a short-term rental unit in downtown DC. Fall 2010 to present.
  • Communications Consultant. Social media & networking for non-profits. Outreach strategies for audience engagement. Summer 2011 to present.
  • Communications Coordinator, Farmworker Justice.  Planned and implemented a comprehensive communications campaign for the organization’s work on behalf of farmworkers.  Wrote op-eds, blog posts, human interest stories and reports to educate Congress, the media, and the public; coordinated print publications (newsletters, brochures, annual report); organized media outreach and public education events; built and maintained content management systems for websites, implemented strategic online advocacy campaigns.  November 2007 to October 2010.
  • Research Internship, Coca-Cola World Citizenship Program, Habitat for Humanity Latin America and Caribbean office. Carried out an impact study of housing communities in four Latin American countries. Interviewed home-owners and community organizers about public/non-profit housing for low income residents. May 22 to August 4, 2006.
  • Full time volunteer corps member, Christian Peacemaker Teams. Provided international accompaniment for threatened individuals and communities in conflict zones.  January 2003 to June 2004.
  • Co-founder and volunteer, H.O.M.E. (Homeless Outreach Mobile Effort) Van, a mobile, free “store” providing socks, personal hygiene products and food to homeless residents in Gainesville, Florida.  September 2002 to 2006.

 

Advocacy Skills:

Familiar with U.S. government procedures and agencies; experience organizing and prepping materials for Congressional and press briefings; experience with fostering coalition campaigns among civil society groups, government agencies and private citizens; experience collaborating on fundraising and development campaigns.

Computer skills:

Familiar with PC, Mac and Linux operating systems; MS Office Suite, Photoshop; Google Applications; installation, set up and administration of online Content Management Systems (Joomla! Word Press); phpBB (open-source software for online forums) and MediaWiki; fluent in CSS and HTML markups plus rudimentary knowledge of PHP and MySQL databases and the use of social media for nonprofits.

Languages:

English (native) Spanish (fluent)

References available upon request.

Categories: Resume

The Globalization of Poverty

excerpt of an academic paper for a class at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law, Trade and Human Rights in the Americas (Spring 2006)

The globalization of neoliberal economics is not about poverty reduction but about the transfer of power from sovereign, often democratically elected nations to private corporations.

Every year hundreds of thousands of people undertake the dangerous trek of immigrating to a country illegally, enduring life threatening conditions along the way and a range of abuse and exploitation in the destination country because of lack of economic opportunity in their homelands. Women and daughters sell themselves or are sold into the sex trade because few other options exist for them or the income from other forms of work are insufficient to a living wage. Less developed countries destroy their environments out of economic necessity, trying to convert tropical rainforests into capital. They build sweatshops and maquiladoras to entice multinational corporations to “invest” in their countries, offering low wages and poor working conditions. After centuries of colonialism –that form of regulated transfer of assets, resources and other wealth from the source country to the colonizing country– the misery of the people and the rape of the land in the Third (Majority) World is the only “comparative advantage” these countries have left.

In one way or another, poverty either causes and/or is caused by all of these various impacts (trafficking, immigration, sweatshops, environmental degradation etc.) of trade liberalization on human well-being. In fact, poverty is so interwoven into the neoliberalization debate that some critics have called it the “globalization of poverty”.

(more…)

Categories: Papers

Lack of bread

by barb howe

We who are born hungry
do not know it.

We do not know
that there is war here
and despair shatters the night
and the bodies of children.

A world falls apart for lack of bread.

We have coffee and biscuits
in the broken morning
and watch the green flicker of wars
fill our tv screens
and we do not remember
the emptiness
of hunger.

There is war here.
Still.
And no one knows who the enemy is.

When men and women go to war
only their shadows remain.

The bakeries stay open into the night
churning out loaves.
We fish them out of dumpsters
And eat in alleyways and gutters.

There is war here.
Daily.
And no one knows the name of hunger
because there is so much of it

A world falls apart
For lack of bread.

Categories: Poetry

September 11th, October 7th

by barb howe

We want revenge
Because the sky has fallen into the earth
And it’s hard to breathe dirt
And our mouths are filled with ashes
And we don’t know what else to do

I cannot tell where the line of people ends
They circle back and start over again

Faces of terror and retribution
Staring dryly in the early morning haze
Stunned
In the fog and smoke of bombed buildings
In New York
In Afghanistan
They pick up the pieces
And start again

And the suited men in capitals
Seated around tables in safe cities
Start over again
While the shells of children cry out
Their bodies litter the streets

There is war here
And the peacemakers
And the soldiers
Walk the same torn and bleeding earth
They pick through the pieces
And start again

Categories: Poetry