Meet the team

Here is a brief introduction to the TeenAIDS team heading to Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2 days:

Dr. John Chittick

Dr. John was educated at Harvard University where he predicted in his 1994 in his 1994 Doctoral Thesis that teens would be among the most vulnerable populations for the sexual HIV transmission in the new millennium. Nearly 20 years later, the latest statistics from UNAIDS and the CDC show these rising youth trends. He was the originator of the Global AIDS Walks that began in 1998 that have taken hi to 84 countries to date. His special teaching methods are "AIDS Attacks" and "Stop Action Theater" that educate teens in fun but highly effective ways.

Samantha Monkman

Samantha (a.k.a. Sam) Monkman joined TeenAIDS last year in mid-2010. She found out about TeenAIDS on Idealist.org. When she came for an interview, she and Dr. John soon discovered that they had both attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (one of the Ivy League) where she was a Geography and French double major. Sam has been appointed Assistant Director of TeenAIDS and is our social media guru. Fluent in French, she will be a great help in Haiti.

Maryna Kariuk 

Maryna Kariuk comes from Kharkiv, Ukraine to be an exchange student in the US. Maryna joined us in Fall '10 and has been involved as our cheif Video Producer; a position that she will hold during our trip. She will graduate from Norfolk State University (NSU '13) in Virginia. She is very involved in TV broadcast and film production and places for the NSU tennis team. She would like to join Dr. John on a future trip too.

In the Dominican Republic they will be meet up with:

Harold Mateo

Since a young child, Harold Mateo has lived in the Fitchburg, Massachusetts the hometown of Dr. John where TeenAIDS had its national headquarters until 2010. He now lives with his wife Georgina in Santo Domingo. Soon they will be splitting their time between the United States and the Dominican Republic. Harold is an international business banker and Georgina is a medical student. Dr. John says that Harold was "among the very first PeerCorps volunteers in the world" 

In Haiti the team will meet up with: 

Drack Bonhomme

Drack Bonhomme lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and has served as a GLobal board member with TeenAIDS since 2005. He will be our host while we are in Haiti. Drack has visted the Fitchburg, Massachusetts area a number of times, where he has many friends and first met Dr. John. Drack and his girlfriend Stephanie are getting married in August '11. They both work together in government service.