More about Program Director Vincent Delgado
I am the founder of the Michigan State University Program on Sustainability in Costa Rica, Co-founder of the Refugee Development Center, past co-chair of the Power of We Consortium and a former Associate Dean for Civic Engagement. I work globally on migration and sustainability; innovative civic engagement projects; and large systems change networks.
Initially a print journalist covering humanitarian issues in Central America, labor in Mexico, and politics and local government in the United States, I am published in major newspapers, travel magazines and international academic journals. As a one-time refugee resettlement director, I led resettlement of Afghan families and the Lost Boys of Sudan following 9/11. I have taught English, community college political science and served as a Lansing City Council member. Areas of interest include nonprofit management; international partnership ecosystems; and community engaged research and design in times of transition.
I wrote A Taste of Freedom: A Culinary Journey with America’s Refugees (2003) and was 2005-2006 International Humanitarian for the American Red Cross Great Lakes Region. During the pandemic, I developed the program How do we Connect? Global Engagement in Times of Crisis. This program involved students, faculty, community partners, and I working on three continents to examine what Charles Eisenstein calls the snapped and “dangling braids” of normality to see how to reweave them. We built a new Global Engagement Transition Framework. We are committed to poet and activist Adrienne Rich’s call for a deeply personal and community response to crisis:
My heart is moved by all I cannot save
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those, who, age after age,
Perversely, with no extraordinary
Power, reconstitute the world.
I live in Monteverde, Costa Rica, with my wife and photojournalist, Becky Shink, and two sons, Diego and Pablo.
October 2023