Patrice Penney, Executive Director

Playing games with children in Nairobi, 2018.

Playing games with children in Nairobi, 2018.

Patrice Penney, MSW, LCSW is the founder and Executive Director of ICARA. After twenty years of working with at risk children and their families in the Chicago area, Patrice and her family moved to East Africa where she worked for a decade (2003-2013). The impetus for the Initiative for Children at Risk Africa has grown out of that work--training and consulting on behalf of orphaned and vulnerable children in Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

Working in this context has deepened Patrice's understanding of the enormous impact of traumatic loss (orphaning) and other traumatic experiences (extreme poverty, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, abandonment, and family and community violence) on vulnerable children. Childhood trauma threatens the psychosocial health of a generation of children in Africa. Her focus in response is to provide training for caregivers so that they can nurture the hearts of orphaned and vulnerable children, and enable them to grow and flourish.

Trained in child development, attachment, child trauma, child and family therapy,  Patrice is developing curricula and other resources for the African context. She is also training in Africa several times a year. If you are interested in inviting her to provide training for your organization, contact ICARA.

In its inception, she is the only staff member. As it grows, ICARA will add staff in Africa as trainers who will join her training efforts on the ground. ICARA would also welcome the application of graduate students interested in a practicum or internship experience. either clinical or research-based, from Africa or the US. Students should be currently enrolled in a program in child and family studies, social work, psychology, and public health or a related program.  If interested, contact ICARA.

ICARA’s BOARD And Consultants

Photo by True Grace Photography

Photo by True Grace Photography

Tom Mockaitis, President

Tom is Professor of History at DePaul University, where he teaches courses in British, Modern European, and Military History. His research and writing cover terrorism, insurgency, counterinsurgency, and peace operations. As an adjunct faculty member of the Center for Civil-Military Relations of the Naval Postgraduate School, he co-teaches seminars on these subjects at venues around the world. A frequent media commentator, he regularly appears on Chicago television and radio programs. He is also an editor of the journal Small Wars and Insurgencies. Tom has traveled in Africa, and has supported Patrice's training efforts for vulnerable children.

Photo by True Grace Photography

Photo by True Grace Photography

Kevin Murphy, Treasurer

Kevin is an attorney in the legal department of Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Corporation in Oak Brook, Illinois. Kevin is a former partner in the office of a major international law firm, and has more than thirty years of professional experience in commercial litigation. Kevin has known Patrice since they were college classmates, and he has followed and supported her work in Africa over the years with vulnerable children.

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Grace Dyrness

Grace is Senior Researcher for The Institute for Transnational Research and Development in Pasadena, California.  She works extensively with grass roots non-governmental and faith-based organizations around the world where she uses advocacy planning and participatory approaches to engage people in communities in order to envision their own future and chart a path towards it.  She is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, and has conducted research on homeless and street-living children in Africa, India, Philippines, and Los Angeles using that research to build the capacity of leaders of organizations to better serve these children.  This area of interest has created in her a deep desire to support the work of ICARA, reaching out to traumatized children in Africa.

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Karl Dortzbach, Consultant to ICARA

Karl is presently the  program director for the PhD peace studies program under the Asia Graduate School of Theology, hosted by the International Graduate School of Leadership in Manila, Philippines where he has served for eight years. He spent 35 years in Africa teaching and training church leaders before that. He has personally experienced the trauma of war violence while first in Africa, and was drawn to help in the painful conflict of both Liberia and Africa's great lake region of Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo during years of ethnic melt-down in 1994. During that time a team was created for trauma healing that focused on the role of the church in the lives of community, particularly women and children.  His dissertation research done through the University of Pretoria was on the healing interventions in community following violent conflict.  Karl and Patrice worked together for a number of years in Kenya.