Viva Virginia - Outreach & International Affairs - Virginia Tech

Photos courtesy of Sarah Swenson
Crusading
for maternal health
in Sierra Leone
Poet and author Lucinda Roy’s finely
drawn West African characters range
from an 8-year-old boy warning of invading
rebels to a petite, prone-to-worry
nun. She brings the reader into their
hearts through a deep imaginative capacity
to feel as they feel. Her empathy
doesn’t just make for great fiction but
also for effective philanthropy.
Tech alum builds
eco-toilets in Kenya
BY MIRIAM RICH
John McCormick
The Virginia Tech English professor
recently traveled to Sierra Leone as part
of a “learning tour” with the humanitarian
organization CARE. “Many children
die before the age of 2,” Roy says,
explaining her work to help prevent
deaths in not only young children but
also their mothers during childbirth.
Roy first visited Sierra Leone as a young
woman volunteering with the British
equivalent of the Peace Corps. CARE’s
work impressed her then and—when
she researched where to donate money
from book sales—impresses her now.
The three-day tour this past January
took her to remote parts of Sierra
Leone and ended with a visit to 10
Downing Street in London to report the
delegation’s findings to First Lady Sarah
Brown.
During a hospital visit, a touching moment
occurred. “One of the things that
Not every toilet opening celebration
calls for the gathering of a big crowd,
speeches, and cake. But the one at
Egerton Primary School in Njoro, Kenya,
in May did.
Sarah Swenson, a 2009 Virginia Tech
graduate with a master’s in urban and
regional planning, spent four months
in Kenya under a grant from the Clinton
Global Initiative helping the Njoro community
build a so-called “ecological
sanitation” toilet for their elementary
school.
The benefits of an EcoSan toilet are
many. “The toilet facility uses no water,
does not smell, and recycles the sanitized
waste in the school’s extensive
gardens,” Swenson explains. “The roof
of the facility also collects rainwater.”
Swenson lived near the primary school,
Top: Sarah joins hands with
school officials at the opening
ceremony for the toilets.
Bottom: The school caretaker
proudly shows off the composting
compartments of the toilets.
haunts me is a little boy, he must have
been about 2 or 3, and he was in the
ICU,” Roy says. The severely burned boy,
alone for a moment while his mother
went to fetch something, looked up “with
a face that was so courageous and stoic.
It is this little boy’s face that I remember
now, always, because it was full of hope,
even though it was so sad.”
Roy wrote in a Richmond Times-Dispatch
guest column: “How splendid it would
be if, by 2015, hundreds of thousands
of women survive to raise their lovely
children.” Delighted by the generosity of
spirit she countered in West Africa, she
says, “I’d always known that people in
Sierra Leone were extraordinary.”
More content, including video,
at www.outreach.vt.edu/now
supervising construction of the toilet
facility, running workshops, and volunteering
as a teacher at the school. She
was grateful for the training she got at
Virginia Tech, especially from a class on
sanitation and water planning, which
taught her how to engage communities
in projects.
“It is important for a community to
be involved to make an EcoSan toilet
successful, because they need to
change their perception of waste,” says
Swenson.
The toilet opening was a big event in
Njoro, with a formal program, talks,
and tours. “It was exciting to hear many
parents talking about how they would
like to build a family-sized EcoSan toilet
in their homes,” Swenson says. “The
younger students are quite jealous that
only the 8th form students [equivalent
to 8th grade] get to use the facility.”
Until they are 13, the younger children
will have to continue to use the older
concrete pour flush latrines, which are
smelly and don’t always work well.
Left: Grammy
winner Sherrill
Milnes, known as
the great Verdi
baritone of his time,
coached singers
and lent on-stage
perspective during
Viva Virginia.
Right: The Next
Generation Quintet
performs during a
master class.
Whether it was a diva being coached
to hit that elusive high note or a
melodious string selection from
Beethoven or Brahms, magic
happened on stage during Viva
Virginia in June and July. The twoweek
international music festival
drew more than 60 rising musicians
from the United States and seven
other nations to study with acclaimed
visiting faculty, all the while
enchanting Blacksburg audiences with
master classes plus chamber music
and opera performances.
You can find links to videos and a photo
gallery at www.outreach.vt.edu/now.
OutreachNOW 24 OutreachNOW 25
Michael Kiernan
Jim Stroup

M A T H E S O N
B R O T H E R S A R E
K E Y P L A Y E R S
By Susan Steeves
This story began with two boys
not much bigger than the stringed
instruments they were trying to
conquer. And, though they were only
about ages 3 1/2 years and 2 years
when they started playing, Bryan and
Kevin Matheson haven’t lost their zeal
for their instruments or the new doors
the violin and viola take them through.
Their enthusiasm is clear as, with
sparkling eyes, broad smiles, and
words almost cascading from
their mouths, they talk about their
profession. In the music world, they
have done and do much—teaching,
performing all over the world, and
organizing community concerts.
They can’t say what about their music
careers they like most—teaching,
performing, or learning—which,
incidentally, they just spent two
weeks doing during the Viva Virginia
festival. But they do say that teaching
energizes them, and they are rewarded
by bringing world-class music to small
towns in southwestern Virginia.
“The students are like our own kids,”
says Bryan, who at 28 has been playing
for almost 25 years. Kevin, four years
younger, began playing about 22 years
ago. Yes, he started at age 2 because,
Bryan relates, “He’d come with Mom
to my lessons and beg to be allowed to
play, too.”
The Mathesons have won prizes in
international music competitions. Now
they teach young students through the
Fine Arts Initiative of Outreach and
International Affairs—students who are
winning musical competitions of their
own.
The boys found a teacher and musical
mentor, David Ehrlich, when their father,
Lance, joined the Pamplin College of
Business faculty. Ehrlich, a renowned
violinist, runs Virginia Tech’s Fine Arts
Outreach program.
“Bryan and Kevin are very special in all
they do—their music, their teaching,”
Ehrlich says. “We’re blessed to have
them here in outreach because they
are proof that you can do great things
Jim Stroup
in the world of music when you’re from
a small town.”
During Viva Virginia, the Mathesons
became students again and learned
some new things including playing
accompaniments with opera singers.
“We had a lot of fun collaborating with
several singers to perform ‘On Wenlock
Edge’ and ‘Dover Beach’,” Bryan recalls.
“A highlight of the festival was being
coached on these pieces by the great
American baritone, Sherrill Milnes. The
vocal master classes were especially
interesting because as string players,
we often try to imitate the sound of the
human voice.”
More content, including video,
at www.outreach.vt.edu/now
Jim Stroup
G E N E R O U S G I F T
H E L P S M A K E V I V A
V I R G I N I A F E S T I V A L
P O S S I B L E
By Albert Raboteau
Doug Curling runs a private money
management firm. Perhaps that’s
why he sounds like an investor when
discussing his reasons for supporting
his alma mater as both a philanthropist
and volunteer.
Virginia Tech “has played an essential
role in the education of my family,”
says Curling, a former president and
chief operating officer of Choicepoint,
who now runs New Kent Capital,
headquartered in his hometown of
Roswell, Ga. “I’m in a position where I
have the time to give back, and I think
I have some skills that I can bring, so
it seems like a good investment on my
part.”
Curling earned his bachelor’s in
accounting in 1976 and a master’s in
the subject a year later. Along with his
wife, Donna, he’s a major supporter
of the Pamplin College of Business
and is a volunteer within the $1 billion
Campaign for Virginia Tech: Invent the
Future.
Curling is a major advocate for the
arts at Virginia Tech as well. His firm
recently made a six-figure gift in
support of the university’s Arts Initiative,
which helped make the Viva Virginia
festival possible.
“If you want this to be a cosmopolitan
kind of institution, you have to have
great academics, that’s a given, but
you also have to appeal to a diverse
student population,” Curling says. “Arts
programs appeal to a different student
group than what you might think of
as the core Hokie—an engineering,
business, or agriculture student.”
At the same time, students in the
technical subjects that Virginia Tech is
best known for also are likely to enjoy—
and benefit from—arts programs at
their university, Curling says. He adds
that the arts also “give the university
a gateway to engage its surrounding
community, which is very important for
the health of a university long-term.”
An eerie performance
highlight: Sopranos
interpret the words of
the wives of Henry VIII.
OutreachNOW 26 OutreachNOW 27
Michael Kiernan
Michael Kiernan