Anna Bethancourt is a junior honors student majoring in English Literature with a minor in Spanish.  She was born and raised in Tempe, and has been involved with COAR for both of her years at ASU.  She loves to travel, and have made five trips to Latin America, visiting Mexico, Costa Rica, and Peru.  She hopes to work as an aid worker in Palestine at some point after graduation in addition to returning to Lima, Peru to work with local literacy efforts. 

Christoph Weber is a senior studying psychology, political science, and Chinese. His interests include hiking, skiing, mountains, new foods, and cultural exchange.  After a year and a half away from ASU to help on the Obama primary campaign and then study/work in China, he returned to Tempe to finish his honors thesis on ethnic relations in Western China and joined the VAP program.  After graduation, Christoph will work as a wildland firefighter in Nevada.

Patricia is a graduate student in psychology at the University of Phoenix. She is also a Spanish instructor and English Language Learner Coordinator at East Valley High School in Mesa.  Her interest in anything international began at a very young age when her parents adopted her brother who was one of the children from Operation Babylift at the end of Vietnam.

She studied in Spain as a Rotary Exchange Student in Alcoy, Alicante and at the Universidad de Salamanca.  As an undergraduate student, she completed a BA in Spanish and a BA in International Studies specializing in human rights and refugees. Since that time, she has worked both at home and abroad as a linguistic and cultural liaison to a variety of communities wherever she has lived. In her spare time, she loves to travel, practice organic cooking, spend time with her family and check out local music and performing arts.  She loves COAR because of the shared humanity that exists between the refugee families and the volunteers while cultural exchange is taking place.

Rema-Therese Beydoun graduated from the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University (ASU) in December 2008, with a Bachelor of Arts in History.  In fall 2009, she will begin her Master’s at ASU, where she will study Social Justice and Human Rights.  She became interested in human rights during her sophomore year in college, prompting her to join COAR as a volunteer.  Rema went on to work on democracy and human rights issues at the U.S. Department of State after graduating from ASU.  In the future, she hopes to focus her work on human rights, democracy and rule of law in developing countries, particularly in the Middle East.  Rema looks forward to serving the refugee community of Arizona.   

Stefani Baca is a senior at Arizona State University.  She is majoring in psychology and minoring in justice studies where she works as a research assistant in a few social science based studies.  After finishing her undergrad at ASU, she is planning on attending NYU to study global affairs with a focus on humanitarian aid and human rights.  She is looking forward to a career which allows her to help people who suffer from human rights violations.