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2010-11 Schweitzer Fellows Announcement, DJ Bettencourt, New Hampshire, News, NH-VT Schweitzer Fellows, Pierce Law Center, Refugee Health, UVM College of Medicine, Vermont
Ask Irina Archipova-Jenkins and Vicash Dindwall what their plans are for the next year, and you’ll get an ambitious answer: these UVM College of Medicine students aim to empower refugees in the Burlington, Vermont area by creating a culturally competent health literacy workshop series that will be incorporated into an existing English Language Acquisition and Adaptation Program at the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.
You’ll get a similarly ambitious answer from DJ Bettencourt and Burke Bourne, Pierce Law Center students who will work to establish a program of restorative justice in New Hampshire aimed at providing crime victims with greater satisfaction with the justice system, and showing criminal offenders the human impact of their actions. (In addition to his law studies, Bettencourt is a New Hampshire State Representative; click here — scroll to page 3 — to read Salem Community Patriot coverage of his selection as a Schweitzer Fellow; click here and scroll down for Nashua Telegraph coverage.)
Archipova-Jenkins, Dindwall, Bettencourt, and Burke are members of the newly selected class of 2010-11 New Hampshire-Vermont (NH-VT) Schweitzer Fellows. Over the next year, they and 22 other professional school students will conceptualize and carry out service projects that address the health needs of underserved individuals and communities throughout New Hampshire and Vermont.
We’ll keep you posted as these new Fellows address unmet health needs (and develop into Leaders in Service in the process). In the meantime, you can browse the new NH-VT Schweitzer Fellows’ projects here — we hope you’ll be as excited as we are about the impact they’re aiming to deliver.
Click here to support the NH-VT Schweitzer Fellows Program. Click here to download an informational one-pager about the NH-VT Schweitzer Fellows Program.
It’s frightening that just a year later, Bettencourt is now leading the charge against many programs critical to serving the needs of underserved individuals and communities throughout New Hampshire and Vermont.
In all honesty, his actions reflect very poorly on the choice in selecting him as a fellow and it’s hard not to question the integrity of the NH-VT Schweitzer Fellows Program.
Hi Ian,
Thank you for sharing this comment and your concerns.
Since 1996, New Hampshire-Vermont Schweitzer Fellows have delivered more than 60,000 hours of community service in the context of specific projects aimed at addressing unmet health-related needs. You can view a full list of these project descriptions here: http://www.schweitzerfellowship.org/features/us/nhvt/nhvt_fellows.aspx
DJ Bettencourt was one of three NH-VT Fellows selected from UNH School of Law last April. DJ and Schweitzer Fellow Burke Bourne were selected because their proposed Fellowship project substantively addressed an unmet need in New Hampshire—the need for more effective restorative justice programming for juveniles.
Each of our Fellows works closely with an academic mentor throughout Schweitzer project implementation; a comment from DJ’s mentor explaining the impact of his and Burke’s Schweitzer project is below:
“Mr. Bettencourt was selected last year, as part of a two-person project to expand the use of restorative justice programs in New Hampshire. Restorative justice programs assist juvenile offenders to take responsibility for and, at least in part, remedy the wrongs they inflicted on the victims of their actions. Thus, successful restorative justice programs allow young persons to avoid the life-long stigma of criminal convictions, while developing notions of personal and moral responsibility.
The Schweitzer project in which Mr. Bettencourt and his partner were involved has established and implemented just such a program in southern New Hampshire. In conjunction with the actual mediations they have done over the year, they have also trained over a dozen law students to act as mediators in future restorative justice meetings. This project will remain in place in future years helping juvenile offenders. Thus, the project has certainly met, as those who selected it believed it would, the aspirations of the Schweitzer program.”
We hope this information on DJ’s Schweitzer project addresses your concerns. Thank you again for taking the time to comment.