June 10, 2010

By Rick Winterson

Amie is the Program Director at the Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC).  She came here from Rochester, New York; obtained a M. Ed. from B.U.; and has studied, taught, and been an LPN in Africa.  Her motivation: helping diverse people.

  Amie Cressman comes from Rochester in upstate New York.  Her parents are Marty and Heidi (Wint) Cressman.  Heidi Cressman works as a homemaker and a church secretary.  Marty is a self-taught engineer who worked his way up to project management at Mott’s Co. – probably most famous for its applesauce.

  She has a brother Mickey, who served with the National Guard in Afghanistan.  He now lives as a homesteader (yes, there are some of those hardworking individuals still around) on 40 acres of land, which he is intensively farming while he studies to be a physics teacher. 

  Amie also has a twin sister, Beth, and in case you’re wondering, they were named for two of Louisa May Alcott’s heroines in “Little Women”.  Beth is a Veterinary Technician, who heads up animal care at an animal shelter in the Catskills.  As you might expect from twins, she and Amie are very close.

  Amie attended Roberts Wesleyan, a small Christian college.  She was not to be left behind her brother and sister in either the compassion or the adventure categories, so she spent the first term of her senior year in Tanzania, an African nation created by the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.  What Amie saw in Tanzania convinced her that her vocation was “to help diverse people”, so after graduating from Roberts Wesleyan, she spent a year studying to obtain her Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) credentials.

  In 2003, Amie came to Boston to join the Notre Dame Education Center as an AmeriCorps volunteer.  She worked at NDEC for two years as a volunteer, and was then offered a position with them.  This led to what we nowadays refer to as “multi-tasking” – including her serving as Evening Literacy Coordinator, Educational Counselor, GED Teacher, Case Manager, and Student Leadership Facilitator.

  In September, 2006, Amie enrolled at Boston University to study for a Masters Degree in International Education Development.  While at B.U., she became acquainted with a program called “My Sister’s Keeper”, sponsored by well known Boston activists such as Gloria White-Hammond and Liz Walker.  Their program had been awarded grant money for someone to start a school for women in the town of Akon in Southern Sudan, Africa.  Amie took on the task.

  It’s difficult to fully describe the extreme conditions there.  Southern Sudan is a breakaway province, which was torn by civil war and had voted for independence from the regime in Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum.  That regime is run by an accused international war criminal named Omar al-Bashir.  Ongoing political persecution by al-Bashir and his cronies also led to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur (Western Sudan, on the border with Chad).

  During a stopover in Kenya on her way to Southern Sudan, Amie was robbed.  She found out that Southern Sudan is still filled with live land mines.  When she arrived, she was told she had to throw a party, which she did by using food from the World Food Program.  Her training as an LPN allowed her to help in the clinic in Akon, where prescriptions are often by word-of-mouth.  The instructions that go with the prescriptions have to be translated into Dinka, the Southern Sudan native tongue, and then memorized, since most Sudanese women can’t read.

  Amie got the school for women started.  It had already been named “Women’s Peace School” by the residents of Akon.  She overcame many fears and doubts.  Her will power wavered now and then, because of Akon’s extreme isolation – when it rains, travel stops.  There are no roads and planes can’t land on the muddy terrain.  But she finished her assignment in Southern Sudan and returned to B.U. to receive her degree in the fall of 2008.

  After that, Amie rejoined NDEC as its Program Director.  Among her achievements to date has been creating a department for support services – job/education counseling, immigration case management, volunteer coordination, and so on – because these are much needed by NDEC students.  She started an Advisory Council made up of NDEC students.  And, of course, she serves as a substitute teacher – still multi-tasking.

  Amie lives near Teale Square in Somerville, and enjoys hiking, especially in the Middlesex Fells.  She loves South Boston and all that it does for others; she can be found at Rondo’s more often than not.

(Editor’s Note:  In 2010, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, founded by St. Julie Billiart, will celebrate 150 years of continuous service here in South Boston.)