Background Information
To read more about FORCE's staff members, use the links below.
Mr.
Matthijs Balfoort, Director
Mrs. Laura Visser, Personal Assistant
Mr. Richard N. Tucker, Project Coordinator
Mr. Jorge H. Fernandez Garza, Project Coordinator
Mrs. Ina S. Krauledat, Manager Communication and Development
Matthijs, born in the Netherlands, is the director of the FORCE Foundation. Besides the general responsibility for the running of the foundation, he coordinates the projects in South East Asia.
After a university degree in Social Geography, he started his career as a secondary school teacher. In 1972, he became Projects Coordinator at the Association for Public Education. After a short period as Director of the Provincial Education Board, he moved to the Netherlands Institute of Audiovisual Media (NIAM) in 1980 and the commercial branch of the NIAMCO Institute. He was Commercial Director of both organizations, until he joined the Dutch Library for Visually and Print Impaired Students and Professionals (SVB) in Amsterdam as Managing Director in 1989.
In 1998, he was asked by the Foundation Friends of the Braille and Spoken Book to become their Managing Director. In that capacity, he started the FORCE Foundation of which he is both Managing Director as well as Secretary of the Board.
He believes that access to information and education for visually impaired people is the best way for them to integrate themselves into, or remain integrated in, a world that is becoming increasingly “sighted”.
Laura
is the part-time personal assistant of the director Matthijs
Balfoort. Her work includes the financial administration of the
foundation.
After graduating from high school, her interest in other cultures took her to Paris for a year to live amongst the French and learn their language and way of life. Back in Holland, she attended the international secretarial school and obtained a management secretary diploma. Having worked as a management secretary at Philips Data Systems, Laura decided to follow her passion for working closely with people from different cultures, making a complete change to become a ground stewardess with KLM at Schiphol Airport. Throughout this period, she travelled extensively. Due to family commitments, she later changed jobs within KLM and became a sales representative with the KLM subsidiary Aerocarto which offers specialty services in aerial photography and mapping.
British-born
Dick works as project
coordinator for Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia.
From 1999 to 2002 he also was the secretary of the Libraries for the
Blind Section of IFLA.
Dick served four years in the Merchant Navy before entering University of Liverpool to study English literature and philosophy. After a postgraduate degree in Radio Film and Television at the University of Bristol, he taught in the Department of Drama. In 1970, Dick became Senior Assistant Director of the Scottish Film Council, responsible for educational media. In 1975, this developed into the Scottish Council for Educational Technology (SCET) at which he was Senior Assistant Director until 1984. Moving to the Netherlands that year, he became Director of Educational and Information Technology at the Netherlands Institute of Audiovisual Media (NIAM), until leaving at the end of 1989 to set up Interactive Learning Services. Three years later he joined the Dutch Library for Visually and Print Impaired Students and Professionals (SVB). Here he was responsible for project development. This involved work on nine European Commission projects including EXLIB, CANTATE, TESTLAB, HARMONICA and MIRACLE until, in 1998, he joined the FORCE Foundation.
From this background, he is convinced that through strategic partnerships real benefit can be gained for print-handicapped people by helping them to help themselves. Jorge Humberto Fernández GarzaMexican-born Jorge is responsible for FORCE’s projects in Latin American and the Caribbean.
Prior to his position at FORCE, Jorge was Manager of the Mexican Office of EBSCO, covering the Latin American and Caribbean markets. He has extensive experience in Information Marketing and Sales and has worked with the most important Information Providers in the world including Swets, ICI, EBSCO and Faxon. Early in his career Jorge also worked as an assistant professor and information resources consultant.
Jorge has lived in Mexico, USA and Europe and has a bachelors degree in Mass Communication Studies majoring in Public Relations from the Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. He also has a Masters Degree in Library and Information Studies and a Masters of Sciences in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University, USA, and a Masters in Business Administration from Boston University, USA.
Throughout his career, he has travelled extensively through the Latin American and Caribbean region and established strong associations with the Information and Library Communities in the area. He has extensive experience with access to and the provision of information and a strong concern for making information readily available to print-handicapped people, convinced that this will improve their quality of life.
Ina, born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, is in charge of PR and fundraising. Research into library services for visually impaired people for projects such as the EC-sponsored PULMAN project forms an additional part of her work at FORCE. She also assists her colleagues with work on projects around the world.
Prior to her position at FORCE, she worked as Alumni Relations Manager at RSM, an international MBA school in the Netherlands, and as a freelance language instructor at the English Language Institute in Hamburg, Germany.
She has lived in Germany, the UK and Spain and has a Bachelor degree from the University of Hull, UK, as well as a Masters degree in European Studies from the University of Sheffield, UK. She has a passion for working in different cultures and with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. This, coupled with a long-standing determination to become active in the field of development work, makes her highly enthusiastic about her work within FORCE.
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