Dear League Members, 

The League of Women Voters of Florida’s 2023 Convention is scheduled for June 2-4 in Orlando, Florida.  The theme for this year’s Convention is “Speak With One Voice and Make it Heard.” 

The following information is available for those interested in attending -

• The Seminole League is entitled to have a total of 11 delegates – President, Vice President and nine additional members.If you are interested in attending, please email your interest to Geraldine Wright.

   

• Convention Registration and Lodging – The Convention will take place at the DoubleTree Orlando located at 60 S. Ivanhoe Blvd. Orlando.

   

  All the information on Convention, including links to register for the convention and hotel reservations can be found at the link below:

  https://lwvfl.org/lwvfl-state-convention-2023/

   

• This link will also give you information about Convention Scholarships, LWVFL bylaws, slate of officers and program.

Geraldine D. Wright, President

LWV Seminole

Would you be thrilled if your career took you to a foreign country for a year?   And if that year fulfilled your wish to make the world a better place, to help a struggling community build itself?  And, if you were a scholar and teacher, to work with eager students and hard-working colleagues --- what more could you want?

Rosemary Closson and her husband, both academics, had that opportunity for a year. They taught at the University of Maiduguri in  Nigeria.   Their stay was through Teacher’s for Africa (TFA) a project of Reverend Leon Sullivan and funded by USAID. The goal of TFA was to teach participatory educational techniques to teachers. Rosemary’s Nigerian teaching work focused on community-based adult education. A highlight of her work in Nigeria was collaboratively planning with the Agency for Mass Education (the Nigerian provider of adult literacy programs) workshops for literacy teachers. This international teaching opportunity was followed by a second year’s teaching stint in Kenya at a branch campus of United States International University.

Rosemary’s academic career has included faculty appointments at FSU, where she earned her PhD; University of South Florida; North Carolina A&T and at Rollins’ Hamilton Holt School. She has presented at academic conferences and wrote numerous articles on a wide variety of topics in her field of adult education. Her academic career followed a career in Human Resource Development with the City of Gainesville and with the University of Central Florida where she developed training programs for mid-level managers and all non-instructional staff. Additionally, she developed credit programs for high school teachers while working at Valencia Community College. It was working in these types of roles that prompted her to return for an advanced degree in adult education.

Married for 54 years she and her husband raised two daughters and they have three grandsons.  Some of us also know Rosemary through her Baha’i work.  She is a member of the Seminole Baha’i community and much of her work since retirement has been introducing this faith to those unfamiliar with it: Baha’is believe that there is only one God, unknowable in his essence, who is the creator and absolute ruler of the universe.  Baha’is believe in the oneness of humanity and devote themselves to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. The faith accepts the divine nature of the missions of Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and other prophets.

Rosemary is a member of Seminole LWV’s Education team and Library team