Teaching award in the U.S.A. to author

May 31, 2007. RIF-FIRE.

A new award has been given to Maria Suárez Toro, producer of Costa Rican based Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) and Co-coordinator of Wings of the Butterfly. She is also associate professor at the University of Denver in Colorado, USA.

The award places her in the List of Honor of Teachers and Professors in the United Status 2006-2007 for “personifying the values and mission of the teaching profession and dedicated effort not only to teaching, but to inspire her students.”

This award in granted on an annual basis for the last 20 years, to the 5% highest ranking professors and teachers in the USA educational system. A special publication containing biographies, names and tittles of the awardees is published each year.

The coordination of the Austin based initiative, Carol Lynn Martens head of the. Educational Communications Scholarship Foundation declared in her setter to Suarez that her biography, “especially what has to do with education and training contributions ill appear in the XI Edition of the award, published in September 2007 throughout the country.”

Journalist, feminist and human rights activist in local, national, regional and international arenas through work as co-director of FIRE—Feminist International Radio Endeavour between 1991 and the present, she worked as a human rights activist and literacy teacher at the grassroots level in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras in the 1970s and 1980s.

Her biography includes the following:

As an educator, she has been a university associate professor of international communications and the University of Denver in USA between 1998 to the present. She also writes about education and feminist training for “La Petatera”, a bulletin of the Feminist Transformational Watch in Mesoamerica in coordination with Just Associates. She has also been guest professor at FOJO in Kalmar, in the international courses for journalists between 996 – 2000. From 1974 to 1982, María was a professor at the University of Costa Rica in the School of Education. Maria was formerly Coordinator of the Human Rights Popular Education Secretariat at CODEHUCA (The Central American Human Rights Commission) from 1988 to 1991, during which time she initiated the Women's Human Rights Project: "Los Derechos de las Humanas," (Women’s Human Rights). From 1976 to 1988, she taught adult literacy in Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her experience in Honduras was documented in a book entitled, I Look in the Mirror and See You by Margaret Randall, published in 2002 as part of the Human Rights Series by Rutgers University Press.

As a journalist she has covered numerous event for FIRE, the international radio station she co-founded together with Katerina Anfossi, thus has been present and active in most scenarios where women have struggled to influence the international agenda to include their human rights: in Durban, South Africa for the World Conference against Racism, in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, where FIRE trained women from Soweto in internet radio; in China during the IV World Conference on Women in 1995 FIRE broadcast live; in Thailand in 1994 where she went into the brothels to interview young Burmese sexual slaves; in Rio de Janeiro during the Earth Summit in 1992, María challenged the ban of the drug lords who prohibited any journalists from going into Favela Rosiña to interview grassroots people; in 1992; and together with her colleagues, María challenged the Salvadoran government’s threats to prevent women from attending the V Latin American & Caribbean Feminist Encuentro in El Salvador and also organized a women’s human rights tribunal at the Encuentro despite the threats.

As a writer, María has written numerous books, book chapters and articles. Her most recent book is Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect being published by Editorial Farben/Norma in Costa Rica. She also wrote an investigative journalistic work in the book, Beautiful Country for Sale with co-author Cristina Zeledon; it describes the grassroots struggle against oil exploitation by multinational companies in Costa Rica and was published by Zeta Servicios Graficos. A second book about this struggle was also published by the Technological Institute of Costa Rica and is entitled, “La Tranca…and the Flow of Oil in Talamanca was Changed Forever.” Both book focus on the voices of the women and men involved in this pluralistic struggle, ranging from indigenous peoples, Afro-Caribbean and other Costa Ricans, as well as former Europeans.

Another book written by María is entitled, Women´s Voices on FIRE – a comprehensive history of the 8 years of Feminist International Radio Endeavor in international published by Anomaly Press in Austin, Texas in 2000. She received the P.E.N. International Writers Association Honorary Mention in 2002 for this book.

She holds her teaching accreditation from the State of New York, and in Costa Rica. She has a Masters Degree from The State University of New York at Albany 1972-1973, and a Licenciatura in Journalism and a PhD in Education form the University of LaSalle in Costa Rica, 2006.

The other two awards granted to Suarez this year include an Artistic Residency by the GAEA Foundation during two months in The Sea Change House in Provincetown during January and February 2007. Another is the “Donella Meadows” Fellowship for a four session course in systems theory at the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont 2008.