Cultivating a Revolutionary Spirit: Stories of Solidarity, Solar Cooking, and Women’s Leadership in Central America

Laura Snyder Brown has worked with community-based organizations for nearly three decades, supporting women and women-led justice efforts in the US, and in Central and South America. She holds a master’s degree in social work, is a graduate of the Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation, and served with Maryknoll Lay Missioners (Chile, 2005). Laura is the co-founder of Casa Alma, a Catholic Worker community in Charlottesville, VA; there, she and her husband have raised three children while cultivating an urban homestead and providing hospitality for low-income families.

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, William Lankford graduated in physics from the University of Virginia, received his PhD in nuclear physics from the University of South Carolina, and taught physics at George Mason University for 32 years. Midway through his career at George Mason, he was transformed by a study tour to Nicaragua, devoting increasingly more energy to the Central American solidarity movement. William taught introductory physics at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua for two years, which led to a Fulbright to study the solar cooking project he developed there. Throughout the 1990s, Bill wrangled several semester-long leaves from GMU and spent every vacation for 20 years expanding the Central American Solar Energy Project (CASEP) to all 5 Central American countries, directing the organization through 2022.