Meet the Founders
Founders: Cristina Blanc, Mahroo Moshari
Director:Mahroo Moshari
Co-Founder Maria Cristina Szanton Blanc, Ph.D.
Maria Cristina Szanton Blanc, Ph.D Biography
Dr. M. Cristina Szanton BLANC has an M.A. in Economic Anthropology from the University of Chicago (1970s) and a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University (1980s). She has taught anthropology to graduates and undergraduates at Columbia University (International Affairs), at Barnard College and at the New School for Social Research in New York and has published extensively on social history, family histories, gender, development and children and youth in Asia but also elsewhere. After a respectful academic career, Dr. Szanton Blanc has become an activist. She currently collaborates with the International Center on Research, Practice and Policy Analysis in New York and has become the main representative at the United Nations of the International Union for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), a respected association of preeminent anthropologists and activists, present on the international scene in over 100 countries since 1945 with meetings, conferences and publications on current issues. I.U.A.E.S. holds Special U.N. consultative status, and is currently headquartered in Leiden, the Netherlands. Its next five-yearly international conference will be held in Kunming, China, in July 2008.
Dr. Szanton Blanc has for the past nine years co-headed the NGO Committee on Childrenís Rights, a network of over 60 international organizations and an integral part of the Conference of NGOs affiliated with the U.N. in New York. She has done research and assessed projects for major development and research organizations such as the Ford Foundation, US A.I.D., INSTRAW, UNICEF, the Innocenti Center, and others.
Her publications include five books and numerous articles and publications. For example ìUrban Children in Distressî (UNICEF and Gordon and Breach 1994) on street and working children in five countries - twenty-one cities - , and ìComparative Transnational Migration to the United Statesî (Gordon and Breach 1994) focusing on Filipino, Haitian and Western Caribbean immigrants after WWII.
Her activities during the last five years at the UN have centered on lobbying governments, drafting key texts, organizing strategic meetings with governments and NGOs and most recently introducing in multiple ways to the U.N. and to the international development scene high school, college and university students from the Broader New York Area and from Europe through summer projects and winter internships.