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