Verona Fonté, Ph.D., Executive Director, Iris Arts & Education Group, Berkeley, California
Verona Fonté, Ph.D., Creative Director
Ruben Barrenechea, Production Co-ordinator/Training Specialist
Verona Fonte, PhD, Executive Director; Sally Hinds, MA; Tom Bair, Gekko Productions
Jeanne Adams, Ansel Adams Galleries; Jan Camp, Founder Iris Arts; Patricia Ellsberg, Educator; Evelyn Messinger, CitizensChannel.org; Jennifer Kuiper, Social Activist
Verona Fonté, Executive Director of Iris Arts, has the digital media skills, the ability to mentor emerging digital artists, and the capacity to provide nonprofits with socially relevant projects with digital media products such as: websites, digital videos, DVD’s, graphic design products.
Verona Fonté, Ph.D. worked as a psychologist for over twenty years in academic, clinical and organizational settings. She was Academic Dean at the Saybrook Institute, had a private practice for over 20 years, worked with the beginnings of the managed care programs, organizational trauma teams and consulted with organizations.
In 1994, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Olympia Institute, Verona participated in a conference focusing on the impact of war trauma in Dagestan, a region of the the Soviet Union in the Caucasus. A Russian cinematographer that was filming this event, mentored her in her first efforts to film. While in Dagestan they met and filmed some of the major political players as this region approached their first democratic elections. One day the cinematographer told Verona his story about being hospitalized and medicated under the Soviet regime when he refused to go into the military. On hearing this story Verona decided she could no longer listen to people’s stories in confidentiality as a psychologist. Rather she wanted to be part of the group of people that helped get important narratives out into the world. The dynamics of diversity and the tension of potential violence in post Soviet, pre-democratic Dagestan (still a region of Russia) inspired her to make her first film “The Peaceful Warrior”.
Soon after this she decided to quite her work as a psychologist and become the Director of Iris Arts & Education Group, a nonprofit with a mission to produce and support socially relevant media, educational and artistic products. She continued her work with trauma and peace through producing of several shorts including , “We Must Not Forget the Children” for Balkans YouthLink 1997 about the crisis in Kosova; working on a trailer for a feature length film in Italy, “Children of War” with Kim Shelton about the tales of children from different regions of the form Yugoslavia; and “Quest for Justice”, about the Korean Comfort Women - 2001, among others.
Through Iris Arts she has made two films for the Ansel Adams Gallery, has begun working in innovative ways with paintings and animations producing shorts that are visually stunning, psychologically, politically or spiritually relevant.
In addition, through Iris Arts she has contributed to the efforts of other socially relevant projects by making websites for non profits organizations, consulting with organizations about their digital presence on the internet, and training youth leaders in developing the digital media skills needed so they can become the change makers and present their visions and stories to the world.
From 2007 through 2009 Iris Arts worked in Costa Rica with the nonprofit, Voz Propria Foundation and Guadalupe Urbina, Director of Voz Propia Foundation, and providing digital media products that support Voz Propia developing a public platform which enables them to present: 1) their sustainable social programs with socially challenged children, 2) their ongoing work with the social programs in conjunction with the co-operative Long Mai Sonador in San Isidro, Costa Rica. Voz Propia has a history of starting local programs that have spread throughout Costa Rica and Central America.
Through work in Costa Rica, which is the only country in the world that has declared “peace as a human right”, Verona is using her network to help support this concept internationally.
PEACE AS A HUMAN RIGHT PROJECT
Project Director: Roberto Zamora, Costa Rica
This project, headed by Roberto Zamora, seeks to strengthen and develop the concept of Peace as a Human Right by developing coalitions with people and organizations in the international community that embrace principles such as disarmament, gun control, peace as a “human right”, fair trade between nations large and small, the rule of law and access to justice. It seeks to challenge the practice of perpetual war, the “outsourcing” development of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to less dominant nations; the impact of the development of these weapons on struggling third world economies and the impact of weapons development and war on the environment and climate change.
MIGRITUDE
Project Director: Shailja Patel
CNN describes Kenyan artist-activist Shailja Patel as "the face of globalization as a people-centred phenomenon of migration and exchange." MIGRITUDE is Shailja Patel's four-part cycle of work which celebrates transnational cultures and reclaims the dignity of outsider status.
In 2008 Iris provided fiscal sponsorship for the upcoming movie “HEIST” about the collapse of the U.S stock and mortgage markets.
In response to the swine flu emergency Iris Arts has offered the comprehensive disaster preparation book "Bird Flu What To Do: Prepare To Survive" and a PDF copy of the updated version "What To Do: Prepare To Survive" both by Verona Fonté to non-profit, religious and community organizations who are interested in creating disaster resistant communities. The organizations need provide only the cost of shipping the books to their location.