Love, life, work, a dog and the power of stories
When your work and your life are equally fulfilling, it can be good. Add love and it can start to get awesome. Insert stories that can change the world and you are unbeatable. Having a great dog helps a whole lot, too.
Such is the tale of Hinesburg resident Wendi Stein – her work, her family, her communities, and, yes, her dog.
Some Hinesburg residents may know Wendi from her walking a black Lab, Bert, either at Geprags or Bissonette Field. He was a huge part of the Stein family. Bert woofed into their lives in 2010. Sadly, he passed three years ago.
How did Wendi and Bert come to love Hinesburg? For Wendi it was, in her words, “Love. Isn’t it nearly always love?” She met her husband, Brian, in Vermont. They lived together in Burlington for some time, tied the knot in 1991, started a family, and made a great community of friends. In 2005 they moved to Hinesburg where they have been ever since.
Wendi works for Population Media Center headquartered in South Burlington and dedicated to using media as a tool for social change. Founded in 1998 by Bill Ryerson of Shelburne, PMC focuses primarily on global population issues, reproductive health and gender equity through storytelling and entertainment.
PMC and Wendi believe in the impact of stories.
“The real-life stories of women and girls who avoid child marriage or gender-based violence are very powerful.” she says. “I was observing a group of listeners sharing what they learned from the radionovela “Toma Mi Mano” (“Take My Hand”). One woman mentioned that she was motivated to replicate what was modeled in the drama. She organized her community to distribute whistles to women and girls. (She said that) ‘one time some men were going to kidnap a little girl of my neighborhood. She had a whistle that her parents gave her in case of emergency, and when that happened to her, she blew it and immediately started screaming like crazy, so she wasn’t taken by the thugs…The whistles helped a lot.’”
A story, within a story, within a story showing that stories really can change the world.
On a personal level, Wendi says, “PMC has helped me as a human being. I am so much more aware of the connection of the environment and resources and human rights. As a program manager I’ve been fortunate to visit the places where our local teams are doing incredible work. … Because of the nature of our work, most of the countries we work in are developing nations. … It can be quite a feat to complete a project.
“I consider myself a people person. I love learning about the people and the culture where we work. People are people. They wish for the same thing as we do. They want their children to thrive. They want their families to be healthy.”
Wendi has other passions. “My first love is theater. I co-founded a theatre company, Theatre Kavanah (theater of intention), that was active for about five years. We’re on hiatus now, but it was a great joy to focus on material that reflected the wide and complicated Jewish experience. I took learnings from my work at PMC and applied it to Theatre Kavanah by not just staging a play but creating several adjacent programs to deepen the experience of the play. And when things align, I look forward to performing or, more recently, directing still.”
Many of Wendi’s friends are musicians. Wendi’s husband, Brian, plays banjo and guitar, sometimes at the SongFarmers program at Carpenter-Carse Library.
Wendi and Brian feel fortunate to have Carpenter-Carse Library, their doctors, their dentist and Dumb Luck Café all within walking distance. They also appreciate Bissonette Recreation Fields and Geprags Park; it was a nice place to walk a dog named Bert.