Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska
Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. In 2001 she moved to the United States where she lives in Queens, New York. She began working full time for the Polish Daily News in 2003, where she covers stories about Polish immigrants in the US. Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska received an Independent Press Association Ethnic Press Fellowship in 2004 and in the same year won four Ippies - awards given to ethnic press journalists every year by the Independent Press Association. Kern-Jedrychowska graduated from the University of Warsaw with an MA in Polish Studies in 2000. Currently she is studying anthropology at Hunter College, NY.
"Feet in Two Worlds: Immigrants in a Global City," was her first radio project.
Her story, Polish Pharmacies, talks about how Pharmacies in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, serve as unofficial neighborhood centers for newly arrived Polish immigrants. In addition to prescription and over-the-counter medicines, the pharmacies provide medical advice, informal psychological counseling and the tastes, smells and sounds of home for homesick Poles.
Links:
» Nowy Dziennik/Polish Daily News
» Piotr Redlinski
Cindy Rodriguez
Cindy Rodriguez has been a staff reporter at WNYC since July of 2002. She covers immigration and housing and has done several pieces on the homeless crisis in New York as well as the plight of undocumented immigrants. Rodriguez has contributed to the nationally distributed NPR program Latino USA. She also contributes to PRI's The World. Rodriguez is originally from San Antonio, Texas.
Her first story, Videoconferencing for Ecudorian Immigrants, talks about how videoconferencing, a technology once used mainly by businesses to assist long-distance communication, is increasingly being used by immigrants to keep in touch with family in Ecuador. In this report, Cindy Rodriguez sits in as an Ecuadorian family living in Queens has an emotional one-hour videoconference reunion with their family including two teenage children they left behind to be raised by grandparents.
Her second story, Human Smugglers Turned Kidnappers, talks about how an Ecuadorian couple in New York couldn't bear to be without their children who they had left in Ecuador to be raised by relatives. The couple hired a smuggler to bring their kids to them. But the smuggler refused to turn over one of the children unless the couple paid more money. It took a year for the couple to get their 7 year old son back. The family recently learned that they will be given visas to stay in the US legally under a US government program that rewards illegal immigrants who cooperate with federal authorities in kidnapping cases and other serious crimes.
Marianne McCune
Marianne McCune is a staff reporter for New York Public Radio and contributes regularly to NPR and PRI. She thinks of the New York Metropolitan Area as the center of the world because that's how she covers it: more than a third of New York residents were born in another country and Marianne reports on the resulting cultural, economic, and political links between New York/New Jersey and almost everywhere else on earth. Marianne has won local and national awards for her reporting.
Her first story is Waiting for Asylum. After seeing rebels kill his father, Bashir escaped the bloody civil war in his native Sierra Leone . He has been waiting for 3 years to find out if the US government will grant him asylum. The application process requires him to continually re-tell the horrors he witnessed. He lives in a state of limbo, always thinking about what happened and worrying about his family still in Africa, and unable to legally settle or work in the US.
Links:
» Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the agency within the Department of Homeland Security to which many asylum seekers apply
» The Executive Office for Immigration Review is the agency within the Department of Justice that houses the immigration courts
» Human Rights First is a human rights organization with a strong advocacy program for refugees and asylum seekers
Marianne's second story is Burmese Refugees. Sai Aung Teekham was a leading member of an opposition political party in Burma . He and his family were forced to flee after it became clear that the Burmese government would put him in jail if he stayed. They just completed their first winter in New York. Sai Aung's goal is to return to Burma to continue his political struggle, and to educate his children in New York so that, one day, they can be leaders in Burma.
Links:
» Burma Today's website collects and posts news about Burma
» The refugee resettlement agency that has helped the Teekham's get their start in New York
Macollvie Jean-Francois
Macollvie Jean-François is a reporter at the Haitian Times, an English-language weekly based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Gonaives, Haiti she spent the early years of her life in a quaint town called Saint-Michel de l'Attalaye. Ms. Jean-François moved to Brooklyn when she was 10, attended the city's public schools and won a full scholarship to Baruch College, from which she graduated with a degree in business journalism in 2001. She enjoys traveling, although doing so on a journalist's salary means arrangements are not always the most luxurious.
Her story is called Remittances to Haiti. As one of the world's poorest nations, Haiti relies heavily on money that Haitians overseas send back home. Through interviews with immigrants living in Brooklyn , this piece shows how Haiti 's economic dependence is a constant drag on Haitians who are trying to build their lives in the US . Much of the piece takes place around Church Ave. in Brooklyn , the center of Haitian life in the New York metropolitan area.
Links:
» Macollvie Jean-Francois works for The Haitian Times
» Inter-American Development Bank provides info on remittances in Latin America and the Caribbean
» National Money Transmitters Association
Arun Venugopal
Arun Venugopal was raised and attended college in Texas, but has lived on and off in India, first as a student and later as an advertising copywriter with Ogilvy & Mather. He worked on film productions in New Delhi and New York before becoming a journalist. He is a reporter for India Abroad and its online counterpart, Rediff.com. His work has appeared in Newsday, the Seattle Times, the Washington Post and Beliefnet, where he was a former editor, as well as Outlook Magazine and the Economic Times in India.
He contributed to Voices of Healing, an anthology dealing with 9/11 and its impact on the Asian American community. Arun has a Masters in Media Studies from the New School, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, writer Meera Nair, and their daughter.
Arun's story is called Gay South Asians in New York. New York has become a haven for Desi (South Asian) gays, who are trying to escape anti-gay prejudice in countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh . But most are not interested in leaving their entire culture behind. So Desi gays have created a new hybrid culture that draws on traditional South Asian values such as devotion to family as well as American pop culture.
Links:
» A Bay Area site that publishes a magazine for queer desis, or South Asians, around the world.
» The South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association has chapters in NY and NJ , and holds monthly meetings.
» Sholay Productions hosts the Desilicious party, featured in the radio story, as well as other events.
» Many of the articles online are distinct from what India Abroad runs in its print publication.
» To find out about other South Asian parties in New York , visit this site, run by DJ Rekha, who also scored the music for ‘Feet in Two Worlds.
Frank McCourt
Host
Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed memoirist, was born in New York and raised in Limerick, Ireland in the 1930s. At the age of nineteen, he came to the United States to seek his fortune and, after attempts at several odd jobs, McCourt found a brilliant career as a New York City public high school teacher, the last 17 of which were spent at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. After retiring from teaching, McCourt and his brother, Malachy, performed their two-man show, A Couple of Blaguards , a musical review about their Irish Youth. In September 1996, Scribner published McCourt's memoir about his childhood, ANGELA'S ASHES, which spent 117 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and became the #1 nonfiction book of the year for both Time and Newsweek . ANGELA'S ASHES won many awards, including the National Book Critic's Circle Award, the ABBY Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and was chosen by many newspapers to be on their list of the best books of 1996. With over 2.4 million copies in print in North America alone, ANGELA'S ASHES continues to top the paperback New York Times bestseller list, added to by the recent release of the film version of McCourt's touching story, directed by Alan Parker. In September of 1999, McCourt presented the sequel to ANGELA'S ASHES, called ‘TIS: A MEMOIR. Picking up where ANGELA'S ASHES left off, ‘TIS takes the reader through McCourt's amusing and heartfelt transition to New York City from Ireland. Frank's new book, another memoir, TEACHER MAN is forthcoming.
John Rudolph
Producer
For more than a quarter of a century John Rudolph has brought world events and the stories of ordinary people to radio listeners around the nation and the globe. Following the attack on 9/11 John led an effort by WNYC, New York Public Radio to document New Yorkers' efforts to cope with their loss and rebuild their city. The resulting documentary series 6 Months: Rebuilding Our City, Rebuilding Ourselves ( http://wnyc.org/sixmonths/ ) and a follow-on program Changed New York ( http://www.wnyc.org/anniversary/changed.html ) were acclaimed nationally and internationally.
In 1999 John began producing an audio history of New York City using archival recordings from WNYC's extensive collection. The first program in this series, New York in Black and White: the 60s, Civil Rights, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis was named "Best news special/documentary, First Place " for 2000 by the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association.
Other programs in the series include: Along the Edge of New York , an audio tour of New York City 's waterfront including history, literary representations and current issues (produced with Karen Frillmann); and The Moynihan Archives , a program exploring the career of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
An internationally recognized journalist, John has produced reports and programs for many of the world's leading radio networks including National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, BBC World Service, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBS Radio, and others. Some notable programs and series he has produced include: Gene Therapy: Medicine For Your Genes, part of The DNA Files, winner of the DuPont Columbia Award; War in the Balkans: Which Way Out? , winner of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Golden Reel Award and the New York Festivals' Gold Medal for International Radio Programming; Population in Perspective , a series on population issues around the world, winner of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award, and the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women's Political Caucus; Vietnam: The Enduring Legacy, winner of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel Award.
John Rudolph's links to WNYC Radio stretch back to 1980, when he produced WNYC's extended coverage of the New York City transit strike. He then served as WNYC News Director, and was the host of City Edition , a call-in program on city politics.