The Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM-USA) is pleased to announce that Julie Laven, of Northfield, Minn., will soon join VMM to serve as a lay volunteer in El Salvador.  She will be working with the SHARE Foundation, a VMM project partner based in San Salvador that accompanies impoverished communities and fosters long-term relationships between communities in the U.S. and El Salvador.

Laven graduated this spring with a B.A. degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies from St. Olaf College. She traveled and studied in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in 2012 through the Center for Global Education at Augsburg College in St. Paul. She has also coordinated trips to El Salvador for adult and youth members of her church, Family of Christ Lutheran Church, in Chanhassen, Minn.  This past January, she served an internship with a Lutheran church in El Paso, Texas through the Border Servant Corps.

The Volunteer Missionary Movement is an international, ecumenical lay missionary organization that works for peace, social justice, and human empowerment. VMM – USA collaborates with local project partners in Central America to recruit, train, and support volunteers from across the country to accompany the poor and marginalized. VMM currently has missioners serving in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Laven will participate in a training and orientation in New York in late July and then travel to El Salvador to begin two years of service. She will be joined at SHARE by another new VMM recruit, Claire Moll of Shelbyville, Ill.