Katie Milligan spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the small village of Kemon in Benin, West Africa, where much of Africa@Play



Katie Milligan spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the small village of Kemon in Benin, West Africa, where much of Africa@Play

Filmmakers win award

Scott Braman and Katie Milligan were awarded a $5,000 prize for their short film Africa@play at the ResFest film festival in Washington DC. We congratulate them on their wonderful work and hope you will enjoy the work featured here on our site.

Directors’ Bios

Scott Braman

Scott is an independent documentary filmmaker. In 2000-01, he spent a year in Ecuador as a Fulbright Scholar investigating indigenous eco-tourism initiatives among the Huaorani. Scott and Katie spent over a year shooting footage and interviewing local people throughout Africa and Latin America for the Center for a New American Dream’s Conscious Consumer Project, a series of ten videos about social and environmental justice issues. In collaboration with Cultural Survival, Scott recently completed a bilingual half-hour educational video about the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, copies of which were distributed to activists and indigenous leaders. He is currently working on a feature length documentary about the Huaorani. Scott is fluent in Spanish and has lived in or traveled to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali.

Katie Milligan

Katie Milligan spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the small village of Kemon in Benin, West Africa, where much of Africa@Play was filmed. As the co-coordinator of the nascent NGO Mieux Vivre au Village, she conducted business workshops, organized farmers’ cooperatives, launched infant and maternal health initiatives, and taught environmental education and AIDS prevention. After completing the fieldwork and post-production for the Conscious Consumer Project in collaboration with Scott, Katie matriculated into Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she is getting her masters degree in public policy. Katie is fluent in French and has lived in or traveled to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Kenya, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Niger.

When this story was posted in October 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before. Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security.

Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?

Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and can you come up with a Political Funny?

Read the stories and leave your comments.