Park This

My Backstory

Edited 2/2009

My name is Susan Ji-Young Park. I have two children, a five year old boy and a nine ten year old girl.

Besides being a mom, I’m a writer, a cooking instructor and a board member of Slow Food Pan-Arab now defunct (a division of Slow Food International www.slowfood.com).  I also work as a coordinator: building and connecting infrastructures. I'm the media contact and public relations person for various entitities (more details later).

I entered the food business because I’m fascinated by the history and globalization of food. The history of food tells us stories of trade, colonialism, technology transfers, and human migration to name just a few narratives.

For any given food related job I have, I work alone for the most part. Whether it involves writing cooking class materials, media kits, book proposals, developing and writing recipes for publication, writing a grant or strategic planning- I do the bulk of the work alone. 

This blog is to keep in touch with my professional network allover the world. Many of us work in related fields or similar projects. I keep connected to my network and friends through narrative arcs. Some of my posts are about framing our collaborative activities into a cohesive story with dimension. It gives us a sense of place and time on a larger map. "The internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom, John Stewart.

I came about this eclectic potpourri of interests in food and politics through a web of events that are too complicated and uninteresting to go into here.

Aid Programs

Kiva.org

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

One Laptop per child

    The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn     by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need     people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority,     not a privilege.