Experience Highlights
As a Small Enterprise Development Agent of the U.S. Peace Corps in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, West Africa, Arney worked in micro-finance with local women’s groups. She also worked with a non-government organization that sends girls to school. Arney taught basic accounting skills to local entrepreneurs. She also taught English. She assisted a musical group to raise HIV/AIDS and health awareness. She also wrote grants, fundraised, and photographed people and environment for brochures, fundraising, and exhibits.
Heather is a co-founder and Board President of Girls to School. Girls to School is an organization that supports girls education and microfinance programs in West Africa.
Commitment to Water.org
While Heather Arney was in Mauritania she played soccer on local youth teams. Practices and games were played during the evenings, yet the sun was still high and the desert heat often lingered in the high 90’s. It did not take her long to realize that not a single player had a water bottle or any water near by to drink. The thirst often seemed unbearable. Having water at a soccer practice became a privilege and Heather was saddened and outraged that such a basic need is so difficult to meet.
Heather is dedicated to seeing a more just world: a world where it is within everyone’s capacity to meet his or her own basic needs. Without a clean and secure water supply no one can work, no one can play, and no one can have a life free of sickness and pain. Heather believes that by working, listening, and providing a stronger voice to communities, Water.org can keep finding ways to combat water-related illnesses and improve the quality of life while meeting the basic human rights of those that are systematically denied.
Education
M. A. in International Affairs, Ohio University (Focus in International Development and Women’s Studies)
B.S. in Business Management, Wagner College – Staten Island, NY
