About GRIFN
The Greenbelt International Family Network was founded in 2005
by Kyla Hanington, Jenni Ivarsson and Anne Gardner. They had
all moved to the US and to Greenbelt so that their husbands could
work at NASA Goddard. Kyla came from Canada, via Denmark,
Jenni from Sweden, and Anne from England. Kyla and Jenni
both had small children, and Anne had children after moving to the
US. All agreed that it would have been helpful to have had
some guidance in where to live, shop, buy a car, and so on.
Thus, GRIFN was born, and Jenni's husband Stefan started to create
the web page.
However, within the year, Kyla had returned to Canada and Jenni
and Stefan to Sweden, and for a while nothing was done to continue
the project. Then in 2006, when greenbelt.com started to
offer free web hosting to non-profit community groups, Anne
re-started the project, with the help of Juliane Haag and Karen
Oslund.
For the moment, GRIFN is purely an information service on the
web. However, if there is enough interest, a yahoo email
group could be added, as well as social events for the
international community in Greenbelt. Maybe we could match
up those leaving with those arriving, to pass on furniture and
other equipment. Let us know if you have ideas or comments.
If you have suggestions or questions, contact us at grifn@greenbelt.com