From the Field
Venda Bukac of Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida (LSS/Northeast Florida) based in Jacksonville and Peter Vogelaar of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRC) in Utica, N.Y., are newly named LIRS regional consultants. Their service began in May and June, respectively. Bukac succeeded Russell Bloom, who directed the refugee and immigrant services of LSS/Northeast Florida since 1986. He hopes to pursue writing and other interests. Vogelaar succeeded Richard Sessler, who joined the MVRC staff in 1990 and became executive director in 1994. He is retiring. A native of the former Czechoslovakia, Bukac earned a bachelor's degree in languages (Czech, Slovak, Russian and German) in 1978 from the Institute of Economics in Pardubice and a master's degree in the restoration of paintings and sculptures in 1983 from the College of Art in Brno. She worked as an archivist at the Museum of Eastern Bohemia, Pardubice, until 1985 when she, her husband and their son became refugees in Austria. For a year she was an archeological assistant at the National Museum of Vienna. The family came to the United States in 1986, being resettled in Atlanta by the International Rescue Committee. Her initial jobs were in a restaurant and as a Russian translator for the State of Georgia Health Department. In 1989 she became a social worker with the LIRS affiliate Lutheran Ministries of Georgia. That same year her husband, a taxidermist, got a job in Jacksonville. She immediately went to work for LSS/Northeast Florida as a resettlement specialist. Since 1996 she has directed the resettlement program. She now also supervises the special case management and citizenship programs.
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Vogelaar
lived in the Middle East for nearly 20 years. As a youth he was
in Oman and Egypt, where his father Harold served as a Lutheran
missionary. During 1993-94 with his wife Shannon he was a co-assistant
director of a semester abroad program in Jerusalem. From 1998 to
last August he was director and site coordinator of the Joint Relief
Ministry of St. Andrew's Church in Cairo. The ministry provided
educational and vocational capacity building classes to more than
750 refugees annually. He has also been program coordinator for
the Great Lakes Colleges Association in Ann Arbor, Mich. In 1988
he earned a bachelor's degree in East African history from Hope
College, Holland, Mich., spending one semester in Kenya. In 1996
he earned a master's degree in development administration from Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
 No. 229
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