Taylor Owen Ramsey, local life time resident joined the Peace Corps after graduating from Palm Harbor University High School, University of Florida, Columbia University and finishing her PHD with City College of NYC. Taylor was Volunteer of the year in Dunedin her graduation year. Taylor has been in the Peace Corps teaching English as a second language to the future Teachers and extended for one more year to work with the Indigenous Indians in the Sierra Nevada Mountains Wiwa tribe.
SANTA MARTA, Colombia, South America (June 27, 2014) – Taylor Ramsey, a
U.S. Peace Corps volunteer from Dunedin, Florida, gave digital cameras to 18 Wiwa children in a remote indigenous village in Colombia to help them photograph their community and help save their school. Now, she
is looking to her Florida community to help support her work as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Ms. Ramsey has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia for 2.5 years.
Volunteering has always been a passion for her and she was the City of Dunedin's Volunteer of the Year in 2002. Ms. Ramsey has spent her life since receiving that award fighting for educational equality. After attending the University of Florida, she spent two years in Teach for America in the South Bronx. After receiving two Master ́s degrees, she taught in several public universities in New York while working on her PhD.
As a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, she has spent two years working with
public school teachers in one of the most disadvantaged parts of Colombia. She then extended her Peace Corps time to work with the local Wiwa
indigenous population because this is a population that is fighting to
preserve its culture. Most of us don't know what it is like to not be able to go to school when it rains. For Colombian
Wiwa indigenous children, a little rain means no class and when there isn't any class, they can't practice their dying language or learn more about
their withering culture. There are only 13,000 Wiwa left in Colombia and
only 60% of them speak their indigenous language Damana because of a lack of indigenous schools to teach the language.
Ms. Ramsey teamed up with a Wiwa nonprofit foundation called Ribunduna
Tayrona and another Peace Corps volunteer to empower indigenous children to play a key part in protecting their community and their educational
future. Together they took an arduous trip to a remote Wiwa indigenous
village called Wimake, where the school is in desperate need of a new roof. They taught 18 kids the basics of photography. The kids were given 11 digital cameras and a day in their community to take photos to showcase
the parts of their lives they thought were important for people to see. They knew the proceeds from their photos would go to remodel their school
and protect their community. The community is ready to re-build the school,
the first two weeks of September.
Now, Ms. Ramsey is looking for help from her home community. She created an Indiegogo campaign to raise $18,000 from selling the children ́s photos to be able to fix the roof so the children can go to school, even when it rains. The photos and other products will be for sale for two months.
She looks forward to receiving support
from her home community, where here passion for volunteering began.
Contact:
Ms. Taylor Ramsey
Taylorowenr@gmail.com
(country code 57) 312-451-4259
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fix-a-roof-and-save-a-culture-
--
Taylor Owen Ramsey
"Genuine love is always radical"-D.C.
Peace Corps Colombia
PhD candidate, Political Science and Gender Studies
City University of
New York
M.A. Political Science, Columbia University, New York
M.S.T.
TESOL, Pace University, New York
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