Our board:
Monica
Appleby, Chair. Monica has been a member of the Clinch River
Educational Center since its beginnings on the Clinch River in
Dungannon, Virginia. Currently, she tests the water quality there
with Anna Hess and Frankie Taylor. Monica has enjoyed the company
of women and a few men in the CREC "flow" of projects and
organizations.
Lynda
Warner, Vice-Chair. Growing up in West Virginia, Lynda was
unaware of the specialness of Appalachian Region --- you don't see the
forest for the trees, so to speak. It took her stint at West
Virginia University to realize the uniqueness of the region and the
numerous ways it had been exploited. Lynda committed herself to
empowering the region by working with individuals and communities, a
passion she fulfills through CREC and through private practice at the
Abingdon Center for Psychiatry Counseling and Education.
Anne Leibig, Treasurer.
Anne brings to the table her experience of living and working in the
Appalachian mountains, creating and sustaining community frameworks for
full living, with an emphasis on women's participation. She has
retired from a 25 year Gestalt Therapy practice and is now writing and
training
through the Appalachian Gestalt Training
Institute.
Anna Hess, Secretary. Anna is an artist
and biologist whose current passions are homesteading, writing, and photography. She and her husband sell innovative chicken waterers
to people across the United States and around the world, a
microbusiness which she envisions is a model for sustainable industry
in the economically depressed Appalachian region. Read about her
experiments with permaculture on her homesteading blog.
Jaculyn
Hanrahan. Jaculyn has spent the last three decades
empowering the local community to speak truth to power while protecting
central Appalachia's environment. Her religious community
missioned her to Hurley, Virginia, in 1982, where Jaculyn learned the
importance of community organizing mountain style, and she continued
her education more formally through the law school at the University of
Virginia. Jaculyn then spent twelve years handling civil cases
for low income people in the coalfields through Client Centered Legal
Services, and another five years partnering with regional
non-profits as Director of the Appalachian Office of Justice and
Peace. When the Catholic Diocese of Richmond closed the
Appalachian Office of Justice and Peace in 2009, Jaculyn and her
coworker founded The
Appalachian Faith and Ecology Center to continue their work.