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Ashley Belyea (right) and her sister, Emily, in Croatia.
In a Bosnian refugee camp for women and children who survived a massacre, Ashley Belyea (in blue shirt) teaches coordinated movement. |
By CATHY DYSON
By the time Ashley Belyea gets her master's degree, she will have spent a lot of time studying how people in war-torn societies rebuild lives after the conflicts end.
The 25-year-old also will have seen some examples for herself.
Belyea recently spent a month in Bosnia, in a region where people suffered from the horrors of ethnic cleansing during the mid-1990s.
She eventually hopes to help those in similar situations by working for the government or an international agency that focuses on social change.
The young woman who grew up in Stafford County has noble ideals.
"She truly wants to make a difference in the world, and I have no doubt that she will," said Lisa Avery, who runs Avery Ballet and has worked with Belyea for years.
Belyea has had a "giving spirit" since she was a child, but her need to change the world was clarified in a defining moment.
"I was in math class, my senior year of high school when the planes hit the towers," she said. "I don't think that left any of us unchanged.
"For me, it was a call that we have to commit ourselves to doing better."
Belyea found a way to combine her humanitarian quest with the other love of her life: dancing.
The lithe young woman who started studying ballet when she was 3 recently visited Brcko, a multiethnic district in the northwestern corner of Bosnia. She volunteered to teach dance in a community center.
On her application, she mentioned her extensive background in ballet and modern dance and that she also could do West African moves.
The group organizing a team of international volunteers jumped at the chance for her to teach children dances from Guinea and Senegal.
Belyea boiled down the dances to four basic moves and named them accordingly: the bird, the bug, the crocodile and the monkey.
On the surface, the children who lined up for classes seemed to be getting along fine, Belyea said. They were clothed, fed and sent to school daily. Their parents went to work and made the occasional trip to the coffee shop or bar.
But as Belyea looked beyond the main streets of towns, she saw bombed-out buildings and signs warning of hidden land mines.
She met only one person who owned a car that worked. While homes had running water, the purification system in one area was so full of holes, its consumers suffered from skyrocketing rates of kidney stones from metals that leached into the water.
The community center where she worked was beautiful, but closed at 4 p.m. during the week and wasn't open on the weekends. Government agencies that run the center had disputes about operations and security guards, so the center kept limited hours.
Then, there were students whose only exposure to modern dance came from YouTube. As much as Belyea enjoyed working with them, she realized the town needed its own teachers if the program was to continue.
She and Rebecca Davis, founder of a dance company in Philadelphia, want to develop a scholarship program. If they can secure grants, they'll arrange for three students from Brcko to visit Philadelphia each summer to be trained as teachers.
Davis believes Belyea can help make the scholarships happen, even as Belyea works on her master's degree in human security at Tufts University in Boston.
Davis saw how eager Belyea was to lead programs and support others in Bosnia.
"It's great to see young people motivated to make a difference in the world," Davis said. "Ashley has the right disposition and a strong skill set to be an ambassador for our country."
Zeljana Trivic, a 14-year-old from Bosnia, also praised her teacher for making class fun and interesting.
"She is great teacher, she gave opportunity to everybody who wanted to try," Zeljana wrote in an e-mail, "but I must say she is even better person."
Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com
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FAMILY: Daughter of Bruce and Rhonda Belyea of south Stafford. Has a younger sister, Emily.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Stafford High School in 2002, then the University of Virginia in 2006 with degrees in Russian and Eastern European studies and international relations. She just started work on her master's degree in human security at the Fletcher School of Tufts University in Boston.
STUDY ABROAD: After U.Va., she spent two years in Scotland doing a teaching fellowship at a boarding school and traveled between sessions. She learned that people everywhere want the same things: to have jobs, be able to support their families and enjoy time with them.
TRIP TO BOSNIA: Avery Ballet in Fredericksburg, where Belyea trained extensively, sponsored her stay in Bosnia, which cost $630. Belyea and her family paid the $700 to get her there and back.
Belyea collected shoes, leotards and other equipment from fellow dancers at Avery to take to Bosnia. |
