Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Home Again: Willow Glen resident Jamie McLeod began working as a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee in Bosnia and Serbia in 1996. On the map of Bosnia behind her, the red dots represent land mines that still remain throughout the countryside. Jamie said that although there's been a lot of destruction in these countries, there remains an incredible amount of hope mixed in with very dark humor to cope with all the tragedy and rebuilding efforts.
Volunteer Without Borders
Director of program for refugees believes in leaving a place better than before
By Michelle C. Crowe
One thing my mom said to me when I was very young is 'Always leave a place better than you found it,' and that's pretty much stuck with me all my life, whether I was in school, or social situations, and it's truly influenced me in a lot of ways," says Willow Glen resident Jamie McLeod.
That deceptively simple saying has helped McLeod in her current work as the program director for San Jose-based Refugee Works, where she helps build refugee communities locally, as well as abroad where she engineered the rebuilding of hospitals and schools with the Washington, D.C.,-based International Rescue Committee in then-virtually unheard of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Born into a family who lived their commitment to community through their employment choices, the Milwaukee-born McLeod traveled a winding road to Tanzania and Kenya, back to the States, and abroad to Bosnia before landing in the Bay Area in 1998.
When McLeod was only 9, her mother, Marty McLeod-Eng Hall lived out that same saying by example. She took a teaching job overseas in Tanzania--and gave her youngster a crash course in how it felt to be the outsider in a foreign land.
"I was always fortunate in that the people of the host cultures where we lived were very warm and welcoming," says McLeod. "But even when people are friendly, it's difficult to adjust when you're the one who's different."
Yet those experiences helped form the character and life work of the woman she was to become.
"Nearly all of my family worked in development and I always knew it was something I wanted to do also. I credit my travel experience and background to my amazing mom, who raised me with the sense of responsibility to a greater global community, and enjoyment of working with other cultures," McLeod explains.
"Probably the most important thing I learned was how to handle myself on someone else's turf. There's a big difference between inviting someone from somewhere else into your home and venturing out into his or her community," she says.
One of the most important influences on McLeod while she was growing up was the music of local folk singer/songwriter Holly Near, whom she met when she was 8. While McLeod counts her mother, stepfather, aunt, uncle and other members of her family as mentors, she considers Holly Near a role model.
"I started listening to Holly's music when I was very young. The anti-war message of her music had a profound impact on me," McLeod muses. "In it I heard a real sense of responsibility and a longing to build the kind of environment people want to live in, feel safe in and raise their families in."
While boarding at the government-run middle school she attended in Kenya, McLeod, as many teenage fans, wrote to her favorite musician. Unlike most of them, she enjoyed the rare thrill of a two-way correspondence.
"I would just be sky-high for days upon receiving a letter from her. She'd share advice or ideas about the problems I wrote to her about. It meant so much to me that this person I admired actually took the time to answer letters to a little kid," McLeod marvels. "When I see her at concerts, she still remembers me. Holly's been a real guiding light."
Photograph courtesy of Jamie McLeod
Kids of Kosovo: Jamie McLeod poses with a group of Kosovar children in 1997.
Although children today are concerned about violence in schools, McLeod's classmates were much more intimately acquainted with war. She attended classes with refugees from neighboring Uganda who'd escaped from the bloody dictatorship of Idi Amin. While she admired her classmates' strength and adaptability, she also learned they were people who were more than their experiences--people who needed friendship as much as food, clothing and shelter.
When she returned to the States to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., her love of other cultures attracted her to studying cultural anthropology. Yet, after a year, McLeod realized that when the time came to go overseas, she would need the most practical community-building skills to maximize her impact--and the words of her mother again echoed in her head, "Always leave a place better than you found it."
That realization helped everything fall into place--her family background of community development, her experiences as an outsider, her desire to do work that would truly help people and her friendships with refugees--and led her into the practical field of civil engineering. There McLeod learned the basics of city and regional planning, and how crucial both the internal and external infrastructure is in successfully building and maintaining a community.
Little did she know she'd soon be called to a much more difficult task--literally rebuilding a war-torn community.
"I loved my time in Tanzania and Africa and always pictured myself returning there to apply my skills," McLeod says. Then she realized that some seasoning in a more controlled, yet real-world, environment might better equip her for service overseas. "I was still naïve, but I wanted to be able to say, 'I've got some tools and experience; how can I help?' instead of just arrogantly assuming I'd know what they'd need."
After receiving her bachelor's in civil engineering in 1992, and her master's from Cornell in 1995, she began working as a civil engineer and environmental analyst.
"I was deeply troubled by what was going on in the world's hot spots, yet I felt helpless at not being able to move toward a solution. So, when the opportunity came up with the International Rescue Committee in 1996, I just jumped at it."
The goal of IRC's multifaceted community building project was to unite members of primarily multiethnic villages together to rebuild commonly used community structures, such as schools, hospitals and medical facilities, in some remote regions that nobody had previously heard much of--Kosovo, Serbia and Sarajevo, Bosnia.
When Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic revoked the previously enjoyed autonomy of minorities in 1991, tension built up throughout that region, ultimately escalating into the ethnic cleansing and atrocities reminiscent of Hitler. In many of the remote villages, certain lifestyle facts that hadn't changed for hundreds of years--people still drove horse-drawn carriages, wells and latrines were often built too closely together for proper water sanitation and disease control, and both physical and emotional divisions between certain people groups remained intact.
"It was extremely challenging work, as sometimes there was literally a brick wall dividing a classroom between children, or an institution with two separate directors for each people group who didn't talk to one another," says McLeod. "Often we'd have to keep going from one to another in order to get agreement from both, but as the projects went on, these people would eventually start talking to each other directly."
Although she was proud of her association and work with IRC in Bosnia and Kosovo, after two years there, she realized her need to return home and recharge. "After seeing the losses suffered by so many people losing their families, homes and livelihood, I really wanted to be closer to my own family," McLeod says. "When you're in a crazy environment, you need a break to stabilize and get back to normal, so when the San Jose IRC office's program director position opened in 1998, I jumped at it."
As program director she was able to directly help refugees as they arrived in the Bay Area from a more stable standpoint, and again help them with practical needs, such as finances, food, shelter and job placement.
"When the first Kosovars started arriving here, it was very difficult for me, having been right in it with them only a year before," she says. Fortunately, one of the first female refugees to arrive here spoke a good bit of English, and she helped communicate the reality of what was happening there without trying to inflame or blame.
"As an American and someone who's lived here for years, I sometimes struggle with the crazy pace of the world we live in, so I'm in awe of the ways she and other refugees have adapted to life here," McLeod says. "I have tremendous admiration for refugees and their survival. Even after so much of their sense of self, identity and material possessions were ripped away, they continue to move forward and even thrive in a foreign community."
"Before going overseas, you prepare yourself the best you can--then you go find out how ignorant you are. Even so, I hoped I'd accomplish 10 years work in six months time," McLeod says. "One big thing I learned is that there are things you can and cannot do, and to accept that you may not be able to have as big an impact as you hope--instead you sometimes have to settle for a ripple effect--teaching people how to problem solve, so that the work will continue after you're not there."
Photograph courtesy of Jamie McLeod
Signs of War: A monument that was blown up in a Bosnian village, shown in a 1997 photo, is one of the thousands of things that needed to be rebuilt after the series of wars that ravaged the Balkans in the 1990s.
During her three years with the San Jose IRC office, Jamie helped develop the Bosnian community, which led to her next position at the newly created, community capacity-building program known as Refugee Works in San Jose. Jamie now helps educate and train mutual assistance associations and community-based organizations to help Northern California refugees through the technical assistance program funded through Baltimore, Md.,-based Lutheran immigration refugee service.
"She's an extremely hard-working person who's intensely interested in refugees being resettled in San Jose. The office was changing from Vietnamese to Bosnian and African refugees at the time she first joined IRC, and she was instrumental in helping the agency transition and effectively respond to the needs of a different clientele," says Don Climent, regional director at IRC's San Francisco office.
"When there were discussions about agencies like IRC becoming more involved in resettlement aspect in Santa Clara County, Jamie was the one to pull everyone together, which had the catchall impact of her stepping on some toes. Still, she posted the information on meetings and made sure everyone felt heard," Climent adds. "She's a great consortium-builder and consensus-taker."
McLeod's program assistant at Refugee Works, Armina Husic, agrees.
"Refugees from even six years ago had a much harder time, because they'd been told to forget about their education and experience, that they could only expect work at low-paying jobs," says Husic, who is also a Bosnian refugee. "When I arrived, not many refugees were involved in public services and there wasn't a lot of information out there on what was available to us."
"Jamie's not the type to save things for tomorrow. She is very professional, she wants to help, and she wants to have clear communication about the reality of a situation," Husic says. "She's a great leader."
Jamal Al-Faqar, a director with IRC and McLeod's replacement at IRC's San Jose office, concurs.
"Even though she'd resigned as of October and taken a new position, she still helped with the office until February," says Al-Faqar.
"It's a truly demanding job, dealing with one of the most severe groups, in terms of needs. Jamie is unique in her amount of energy and dedication to this cause," Climent says. "In addition, there's a positive energy that surrounds her."
Although the number of actual refugees is on the rise, fewer are admitted each year to the United States, Al-Faqar notes. In 1992, 120,000 were admitted, while in 2000, only 80,000 were. In Santa Clara County, IRC helped 914 refugees.
People laugh when they hear that McLeod, the engineer, now handles social services, but she replies that engineering is essentially problem-solving, and what she does now is equip people to solve their own problems.
Given her background, it was natural for her to fall in love with Willow Glen--an area noted for its closeness of families and sense of community. She's lived in the same home on a tree-lined street near Glen Eyrie and Lincoln since she first accepted the San Jose job in May 1998.
"I'm really spoiled with being able to see the Guadalupe from my back porch," says McLeod, who lives with her two cats, Travis and Turtle. As a joke, Travis' namesake is country music singer Travis Tritt, while Turtle was named for a shy storybook character. Not surprisingly, the brother and sister felines also happen to be refugees of a sort--she adopted them from San Jose-based Companion Animal Rescue Effort.
"Communities are wonderful when they're healthy, flexible and nurturing, but they're also very fragile, and we all need to safeguard and protect them. We may think of ourselves as peace loving, but in stressful environments, they can easily fall apart and become chaotic," she adds.
She cites Silicon Valley's housing problems as an example. Due to a strong economy, there are more resources and ways to address the needs here than in many places.
"It's important that everyone participate in community activism, whether at small levels such as picking up trash on the street, or with more formal volunteerism," McLeod says. "It all comes down to our investment in our families, friends and community--that's the fabric we all rely on, whether we're aware of it or not."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
