Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Peter Coldwell – Founder, Treasurer

VFP founders Peter and Penny Coldwell

VFP founders Peter and Penny Coldwell

Peter holds a B.A. from The American University and additional credits from Assumption College and Castleton State College. He speaks conversational German, Russian and some Spanish. Peter has traveled, lived and/or worked in some sixty countries. Peter did his first workcamps in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1968. He has practiced Yoga for over 45 years and has taught Yoga classes in Vermont. He’s a “jack of all trades” skilled in carpentry, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work. He and his soul mate, Penny, built their own home in Mt. Holly, Vermont where they share land with their two daughters and four granddaughters.

Tom Sherman, President

Tom is the former Executive Director of the New Hampshire affiliate of the American Diabetes Association. Tom has professional skills in fundraising and grant writing, and is also experienced in public relations and advocacy work, having served as the Project Director for Southwestern Community Services in Keene, NH and Assistant Director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut, Lebanon and Hodeidah,Yemen. Tom has helped to organized about 15 workcamps in the Newport and Concord, New Hampshire area and is a founding member of Volunteers for Peace. He is a grandfather of five children and lives in Goshen,NH. Tom has taught Yoga, Tai Chi and Chi Kung in southern New Hampshire for the past 22 years and is director of the Bija Ananda Yoga Teacher Training Program.

Paula Cantor

Paula graduated from Clark University with a BA in psychology and from UMass, Boston with a Masters in Education. She currently lives in Boston where she teaches fourth grade in the Boston Public Schools. She first participated in workcamps in Europe in 1988. Since then she has volunteered in Turkey and Ghana and has led and organized workcamps in Honduras, Philadelphia and many in Boston. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras from 1993-95. She has traveled extensively in the US, Europe, Egypt, Israel, Central and South America and West Africa. Paula has been a VFP Board member since 1991. She currently lives in Boston with her son.  She works as a fifth grade, Bllingual Special Needs teacher in Framingham Public Schools.

Cara Connors

Cara holds a BA in Geography and Political Science from Hunter College and a MA in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy & Management at Brandeis University. She lived in Nairobi, Kenya for a year to conduct her MA field research on the uses of drama therapy with various disadvantaged youth populations. Ten years ago she moved back to New York City as a NYC Teaching Fellow, and earned her MS in Education. She has worked at CMSP 327 in the South Bronx the whole time, and truly enjoys being part of an exemplary learning community. Recently, she graduated from the Bank Street College of Education as a Wallace Fellow with an Ed.M. in Educational Leadership. Now Cara enjoys a leadership position at her school as well as conducting drama therapy sessions with at-risk students. Cara has done VFP work camps in Kenya and Botswana, and has traveled to Indonesia, Australia, and numerous European, African, Latin American and Caribbean countries. Cara has been deeply involved with the Haiti Clean Water project since 2011, which has included co-writing a comprehensive training manual, conducting dozens of trainings, and leading several VFP Clean Water work camps. Currently she manages the project and lives in Manhattan with her husband Daniel.

Charles Rudd Mackenzie

A graduate of Vermont Law School, Charles is an attorney in private practice in New York City and Westchester County, and he runs an ancestry research service. He has served as a teaching fellow in New York City Public Schools and as a director of five other non-profit boards. He has traveled through Europe, taken part in two IVS projects in Poland in 1991, and led a volunteer project at the URI’s Environmental Resource Center in 1993. He was raised in Germany and Ardsley Park, New York, and speaks fluent German.

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