Taryn Johnson
|
Taryn Johnson is one of our AmeriCorps/VISTA Service Members who joined our team on August 1, 2022. Taryn grew up in Southeast Michigan and is a 2021 graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina. She majored in Education and Community Studies, focusing on issues like poverty, racial injustice, immigration, housing insecurity, and mass incarceration. Taryn is deeply passionate about ensuring everyone, especially those most marginalized, are able to live meaningful, peaceful lives and experience upward social and economic mobility. She is serving with AmeriCorps at the Alabama Interfaith Refugee Partnership to turn that passion into reality.
|
Jay Townsend
|
Jay Townsend joined the ALIRP team as our second Americorps/VISTA service member on June 6, 2022 as a Refugee and Asylum-Seeker Support Coordinator. Jay is a Birmingham native who has lived and worked in the Middle East, Asia, and most recently Central America. Early on in his career, with a Bachelor's degree in French and an advanced degree in Education, he spent years working overseas fully-immersed in cross-cultural settings as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher. He also later worked in the industrial sector in international setting. For the past 12 years he has worked in the sales department for a small business. However, last year, he felt a new calling to return to his original work in teaching and ended up living and teaching in one of the few areas of the world he had never lived: Latin America. Now back again in Alabama, Jay believes that now is the season for him to dedicate more time towards service and mission in his life.
|
