Caroline Whistler graduated from Duke University in 2008 as a Robertson Scholar with degrees in Political Science and African and African American Studies. While at Duke, she worked in refugee resettlement for Liberians and Cubans in New Orleans, and then lived on a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana teaching about her resettlement experiences and applying knowledge from a social enterprise class to a local NGO. The following summer, Caroline taught English and conducted a needs assessment at a rural school in Argentina. With a strengthened interested in Latin American development, Caroline studied abroad in Brazil and researched an Ashoka fellow who practiced “economic solidarity” by starting a community bank, Banco Palmas, in a favela community. Caroline returned to Brazil to develop international outreach for Banco Palmas and to lead a group of American students in construction of a drum factory to help the community generate income. After graduation, Caroline was a summer associate at the social enterprise consulting firm Community Wealth Ventures and completed New Sector Alliance´s one-year fellowship, the Residency in Social Enterprise, with the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) in Boston. Working on nonprofit growth capital campaigns with NFF deepened Caroline’s passion for scalable, sustainable ways to increase social impact. Caroline is currently a Fulbright Scholar in São Paulo, Brazil, researching the sustainability of Brazilian nonprofit organizations in partnership with Ashoka Brasil and the University Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Caroline joined Catalytic Communities in September of 2010 as Development Intern, with the specific tasks of supporting successful fundraising campaigns and creating a sustainable fundraising strategy to serve the organization for years to come.
by International Observers
The Post-disaster Landscapes of Rio’s Mountain Range
It had been raining for over a month, more than we were supposed to receive in São Paulo for the entire Summer. But Rio had it worse. More than 61cm had fallen in the mountainous […]