stories

Profile

I’m Ron, and I’m originally from rural Indiana, in the United States. I love to cook and hang out with friends, and I’m an introvert who loves people, which makes for some complicated situations sometimes! I learn a lot from traveling. I’m close to my family and my kids are my joy. I was also raised Mennonite in rural Indiana and am an active part of the progressive Mennonite community in Seattle. 

I am a scholar of cultural and media studies, with a research focus in three areas: media, African Studies, and politics. My work usually combines at least two of those three areas (i.e., African politics, politics and media, media in Africa). I also focus on human rights in my teaching, and have a long history in both international education and community-based learning. 

I love the outdoors, and I’m a passionate soccer fan. In that vein, more recently I’ve been doing a lot of teaching and research on the politics of soccer.

I come from a family of educators and have believed in the power of education throughout my life.

And my own experiences in education have been transformative in my own life, so I have a sense first-hand of how education can really change one’s world view. 

I went to a college with an international education emphasis, which has really shaped my own experiences and a global outlook. Providing opportunities to develop that sort of global perspective for students is a big part of what drives me on a daily basis. 

In part, this is motivating because I believe students with a less nationalistic, more global world view are far more likely to make the kind of change we need in our world, in both big and small ways. I also find that college teaching, for whatever reason, just seems to suit me well — I enjoy it and I seem to be half decent at it. 😉

I am passionate about teaching, and really enjoy teaching using high-impact practices, such as international education, community-based learning, collaboration, cohort-based programs, and more.

I have never met a more committed group of teachers than I’ve encountered in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (IAS) at University of Washington Bothell, where I teach. The interdisciplinary nature of the school and dedication to the art of teaching means that I’m constantly surrounded with engaged and creative colleagues and a really interesting student body, which keeps life interesting. And I am deeply committed to the IAS mission of making a quality education accessible to first-generation and marginalized students.

The Global Reciprocity Network and the Global Scholars Program are both things that I am incredibly proud of from the past three to four years.

Working with an undergraduate research team to document the successes of the Global Scholars Program has been really rewarding as well. I believe that the Global Scholars Program has really carved out a space for students in a unique and important way, and the kinds of positive feedback that we hear from those students is incredibly rewarding. The Global Scholars Program is definitely somewhere where I feel like we’re putting our values into action with real, concrete results for the students involved.

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I’m Ben and I love meeting people, sharing ideas, and learning new things. I often find myself questioning common narratives about the world. I love to engage in conversations that help me to know someone and learn something new. 

And I love most things about the water — being in it, on it and around it. Growing up in Miami, Florida, I was able to spend time on the water with family and friends, and now living in the Pacific Northwest, the Salish Sea is an ever present reminder of the water’s importance for our lives and livelihoods. 

When I was younger, I led many outdoor and international educational programs. I love working with young people in a hands-on setting and seeing how their knowledge and confidence grows. 

I’m a professor at the University of Washington Bothell, where I get to interact with many amazing people from my colleagues, to my students to collaborators in research.

I came to academia after understanding many of the world’s problems were a product of biased narratives and discourses.

I hoped that researching, teaching and collaborating to challenge dominant discourses would contribute to positive change. 

My research examines how communities and grassroots activists fight against powerful companies and states to secure their rights and dignity. I am constantly amazed and emboldened by the tireless work of everyday people and leaders who take great risks to challenge the status quo.

I am motivated to by engaging with others and hope that I can share knowledge, tactics and clear eyed optimism to people in pursuit of their life goals.

As a teacher I am privileged to be in a position to mentor and guide my students as they navigate school and life, such as asking questions that help them go beyond everyday discourses of citizenship. 

I love teaching as it helps me to better understand the issues I am interested in and provides a constant source of debate and dialogue. I am especially excited when students see their own experience reflected in the material, often empowering them to recognize themselves as experts in a field that they once felt marginalized by. 

As a professor and leader in higher education, I enjoy supporting my colleagues to do their best work and recognize the important contributions they make in the world — for instance, my colleagues and collaborators in Tanzania who are continuing to challenge powerful groups and ideas in their fight for land and human rights.

Profile

Hello, great to meet you! I’m called Anu, and I’m passionate about questions. I love that a good question can make us pause, rethink and revise what we know. Sometimes a question absolutely needs to be answered, and other times, not at all. Questions keep my brain nimble, and encourage me to stay curious and engaged.

As the daughter of immigrants who has grown up between two cultures, I often draw on my personal experience as a way to connect with and amplify the voices of those who have historically not been heard.

As a scholar and academic at the University of Washington, I also know that racial equity work is challenging, emotional, institutional, and personal. I’ve taught about global issues, race, gender, identity, and equity to thousands of students, presented at high-profile as well as more humble events, and collaborated with social change agents and innovative thinkers around the world. 

In my consultancy practice and as a facilitator, I partner with clients for the long haul and strive to build inclusivity and collaboration, inviting people into conversation.

I’m a cultural in-between and go-between who values nuance as well as clarity.

I bring both passion and expertise to my work as a speaker, facilitator, author and educator. I specialize in issues of racial equity and social change. I believe in dialogue, and invite people to grapple with the challenges of history and navigate our present with curiosity, honesty, and open-heartedness.

I’m so compelled by the notion that all of us deserve to feel seen and heard in our complex identities and experiences. Each and every one of us.

If all of us did feel more seen and heard, would we then act out our insecurities on others less often?

Would we then have more space in our hearts for true compassion and empathy?

The quest for more care, camaraderie and connection is what drives me each and every day. I’m inspired by the many change-agents I’ve met around the world — ordinary people who are making life a little better for themselves and others in the small pockets of life that they lead.

The fact that I get to bring people together to talk about critical personal and social issues feels incredible to me.

We need healthy, productive and engaging dialogue now more than ever. Most of us have been raised with little familiarity and too few tools on how to build authentic relationships across different identities and experiences. This, of course, has deep consequences in our communities both near and far. With some support however, we can create more meaningful connections based on love, grace and friendly curiosity with both ourselves and each other. I love that I get to do this work!

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I am Oppong from Accra, Ghana. I am interested in youth empowerment, leadership, and advocacy.  I am outgoing and enjoy meeting people from all over the world as it allows me to learn more about different people and different cultures in the world. I’m always inspired to learn new things.  

I love the ocean because it gives me a sense of calm and relaxation. It made me reflect and think deeply. Sometimes I just sit there and admire its beauty. I will love to live close to it someday. 

I serve as a project and volunteer coordinator with the Cheerful Hearts Foundation, a grassroots nonprofit focused on combating child labour and trafficking in rural fishing communities in the Central Region of Ghana.  

We address the root causes of child labour and child trafficking through advocacy, education and health initiatives, and child education support programs. One of the organization’s main goals is to empower youth through skills and leadership training and sports programs to realize their potential and take positive action to make a lasting impact in their communities. 

In my work, I actively advocate for children’s rights and oversee the design and implementation of our educational program activities. Over the years I have worked on projects that focus on addressing social issues affecting children’s rights, health, and education in rural fishing communities. I lead project teams to design and implement interventions by engaging actively in the field to raise community awareness about children’s rights, the dangers of child labour and child trafficking, the importance of education, and the provision of quality and inclusive education in local schools. I also coordinate international and local volunteers and interns. Another important aspect of our work is that we conscientiously work closely with those in the communities we serve. 

I also support other nonprofit organizations, including Patriots Ghana and Leading Well Ghana. I am focused on helping create an environment where the youth are empowered, included and take active actions in creating social change in their communities. 

Being able to help address some of the social issues in my community and make a good impact on people’s lives through my work motivates me everyday.

My colleagues also inspired me a lot and contributed significantly to the growth of my passion from the very beginning. There is nothing more empowering than knowing that I am making a difference through my work while working with a collaborative team of dedicated and selfless individuals.  

One of my greatest inspirations is the people in the communities I work with. I’m honored to hear the stories of people who let me be part of the solution. I feel so blessed that they tell me their stories of how they navigate life and that I can connect with them on a deeper level. They inspire me to cherish every day of my life. I enjoy  spending time with and mentoring the youth and children in my community; they can be very inspiring. 

I am pleased to realize that my efforts can have an impact, even if small. One of such impact is from a reading program that I created and led a team (with diverse background and experience) to design and implement, which has helped children in an under-resourced community to develop good reading habits, enhance their reading skills, and improve their learning. Our Student Tutoring And Reading (STAR) club was founded as a result of this initiative. The club provides a welcoming, safe, and enjoyable learning environment for all children.   

My work in the area of education where we engage closely with key stakeholders has led to the development of the teacher training program, which we have design to provide practical training to teachers in deprive communities in order to improve teaching and learning methods. It’s always exciting to see teachers putting what they’ve learned into practice in their classrooms and assisting their students development. Many of the teachers who took part had never had any official training. 

I’m proud to be a part of our advocacy project, which has educated over 50,000 people, including opinion leaders, teachers, parents, and children, in rural fishing communities in the Central Region of Ghana about the rights of children, child rights laws, and the importance of education. We strive to raise awareness about the dangers and negative effects of child labour and  child trafficking. 

We have trained and supported many youth in the communities we serve, empowering them to enact positive changes in their communities for years to come. They are fully aware of the scope of social issues concerning their communities and beyond, and understand their role as young leaders in effecting social change. 

I believe that we all have a responsibility to make the world a better place. I am not looking to change the world, but I hope that what I do can actively contribute to addressing some of the social issues I see every day. I believe that it is not enough to be concerned about inequalities and social injustice everywhere, we need positive actions to impact the change we seek, so it is important to me that my work can inspire and empower people to take those actions as well.  In my opinion even a small effort done well can have a significant impact. There is an African saying that, “I am because we all are” This implies to me that we are all responsible for the world we inhabit and should make a positive contribution. 

Profile

I am Maanda Ngoitiko, and I was born in Soitsambu, a small remote village in Ngorongoro in Northern Tanzania. Raised in a closely-knit extended Maasai family, I was one of those troublesome kids, and this is the particular reason I got sent to and stayed in school. 

When I’m not working, I am quite occupied tending to my really big family of so many children (6 of my own), our livestock, and as of recently, my vegetable garden. 

I am an outgoing person, and every now and then, I make time to link up and touch base with my close friends, usually over a mug of milk tea or Nyama Choma (roasted beef/goat/mutton, a local delicacy and a personal favorite).

After completing my primary school education, I successfully refused a second attempt at a forced arranged marriage.

The late Hon. Lazaro Parkipuny, then a member of the Parliament of Ngorongoro, and with the help of my cousin brother, Parkipuny arranged for my escape in the middle of the night, took care of me and sent me off for further studies. 

Parkipuny was very hard-working, knowledgeable, and so passionate in his advocacy for pastoralists. He believed in me, and after I earned an advanced diploma in developmental studies in Dublin, I came back to work with him at KIPOC, an NGO he started to help the pastoralists protect their Indigenous land and improve their economic status. 

Working with him, I learned so much and it was while at KIPOC that I saw the need for and gained practical skills to start a women-centered organization.

In 1997, I was one of 10 Maasai women who founded Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC).

In PWC’s early days,  my fellow founders and I walked for miles and miles, reaching out to women in different villages across the Ngorongoro district with early sensitization meetings about the idea of PWC — women’s rights and girls’ education. We faced some difficulties, with men feeling like we were trying to make their daughters and wives defiant and with the majority of the women being reluctant to go up against community expectations. 

Slowly we won them over and built momentum and now we have 10,000+ members. We are devoted to work with and for pastoralist women and girls in northern Tanzania to ensure their rights and voices are respected, they are economically empowered, and they have access to quality social services.

Now, I am PWC’s executive director.

In this capacity, I work with my team, the majority of whom are women, to plan and design various contextualized community-led projects, oversee their implementation through active involvement in field work, paying regular supervision visits as well as going through field reports. 

For example, through our Women Solidarity Bomas program, women get to collectively own and manage a livestock business the profits of which help in restocking for the poorest boma members (among the Maasai, livestock are of high socioeconomic value.). Through this work, women are able to provide for their families while also transforming the community’s biased perceptions on women’s decision-making abilities.

Every day I wake up grateful, knowing that I have the ability and I am well positioned to actually make meaningful changes in so many girls’ and women’s lives.

Having experienced life both as a young vulnerable Maasai girl and as an educated, empowered and liberal Maasai woman, I know that anyone would, by far, choose the latter. 

Through PWC, my team and I are helping young girls realize their potential and endless possibilities in life through access to quality education and we are equipping women to realize, advocate for and exercise their rights through continued learning, economic empowerment to enhance financial independence and access to and utilization of social services as well as building on their leadership skills and encouraging them to take up male-deemed influential roles in their families and communities.

From my experience, empowered women empower their families.

Through one of our economic empowerment programs, we equip women with basic entrepreneurial skills then facilitate them to explore and venture into small businesses. With this newly found source of steady income, the women help with unmet needs of their families including daily supplies, better living conditions, children’s education, and even family investments. This in the long-run contributes to more economically stable, healthier and happier families and communities.

When we started PWC, we struggled with getting parents to send their daughters to school. We had to use the police to break up so many arranged early marriages, rescuing the girls and giving them a safe home and an opportunity to proceed with school. 

With time however, people realized the importance of girls’ education, and we are now seeing men sell their cattle and properties to finance their daughters’ education as well as receiving overwhelming numbers of scholarships requests from girls and their parents. 

We also have worked with women representatives and community champions to establish two CBOs and many women rights and leadership forums — all are informal platforms that have gained  considerable respect in their communities for the wonderful work they have been doing for women in their localities. They have been the first line of response  for women who face gender-based violence as well as our key focus points when mobilizing women-led advocacy, especially on land rights issues.

And for this reason, I have to keep pushing for more.

The Maasai girls and women (many of whom have become my friends) who call and come to our offices with so many pleas for help, be it education scholarships, help fleeing from early and forced marriages to continue with school, reports of gender-based violence, or just a vote of thanks for those whose lives we have touched in anyway keep me motivated, even on days when I am extremely tired.

Profile

I am Indhu. I live in the bustling city of Bangalore in South India. Time disappears when I take long walks, watch birds or read a book.

I am an independent researcher, facilitator and activist engaged with gender, women’s histories, lives and human rights, marginalisation and democratic processes.

I was formerly the head of Hengasara Hakkina Sangha, a feminist space that I nurtured with my colleagues for 12 years. As an organisation, we staunchly believed in violence free life and equal rights for women in all arenas. This was reflected in our legal and rights literacy training for rural women’s collectives, in our research on women’s lives and institutions, and our advocacy work. 

My work gives me meaning. I feel I contribute to a counter narrative to the dominant, mainstream and hegemonic discourse generated by majoritarian powers everywhere. Everyone deserves dignity in a community, in a country and in the world. We are all located at different axes of power and need to be dynamic in our perception of how power acts, unbind ourselves from; rigid, dogmatic, ideological articulations. Only this can change peoples life situations and infuse activism with vitality. This is the disruption that I seek.

My colleagues and I created resources in Kannada from a feminist perspective on rights, gender, and law.

When we were working with women’s collectives on violence against women, we knew there weren’t any resources in our languages. Most resources were in English and thus the rights language seemed alien and distant. 

Thus, our painstaking work researching, designing, creating resources in Kannada helped empower many rural activists to spearhead campaigns on violence against women. It helped them articulate women’s worlds through a language of rights with social, legal, and bureaucratic institutions. I am immensely proud of this achievement.

I am motivated by the need to see an equal world, for genders, gender minorities and other marginalised people.

I am inspired immensely by the hope and dignity that people have even in the most marginalised and hierarchical spaces.

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Hi! I’m Panch, (short for Pancho, though Spanish-speakers call me Francisco). I’m 30 years old, born, raised, and living in Mexico City.  

When I’m eating with someone I don’t know, I always ask, “Do you have any food restrictions?” 

When I ask that, we often start talking about food. This is my favorite starter for a conversation because what we eat and what we don’t eat says a lot about us. 😀

I am a human rights advocate with a broad experience in promotion, education, youth, and sexual rights.

To realize my work is valuable, as it supports people in navigating healthcare, HIV prevention and treatment. Truly, one of my biggest motivations is to see how certain families support their relatives living with HIV, how they stand next to them whatever happens. This isn’t always the case, so to witness it means so much. 

My work affords me continuous self-learning and reflections, in terms of tools, prevention, and communication. Many times I see myself in the troubles, questions, and concerns that people have, and I think, “Damn! I had the same issue — how can I support this person and help them cope?”

I worked on the development of an HIV vaccine.

It is a phase 3 study! Even if this study shows this vaccine doesn’t work, we’re still contributing to an approach within key populations, sharing tools, and linking to healthcare services for people that usually don’t have access to. 

I was the coordinator of the Community Education and Engagement unit of the HIV Research Department of the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition. In the unit, we work on three main lines:

• Community education, which is to share scientific information about HIV and other STDs among the key populations,
• Recruitment into the trials, and
• Retention, to keep those in the studies.

Currently, I’m at the Aids Healthcare Foundation in Mexico, where I am the Prevention Manager. Additionally, I’m an independent consultant for different projects, institutions, and agencies. I was selected to be part of the United Nations Fund of Population in Mexico Youth Advisory Board. There were a total of 20 young people from different regions of my country on this board. I’ve worked with different nonprofit organizations, universities, agencies, and public

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I am Eric, and I was born and raised in Ghana in a big family, where I am the eldest of six siblings. In 2015, I served as a fellow of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) in recognition of my active community engagement, passion for ending human trafficking, and commitment to building leaders of change. I have a Masters in Social Work — Policy and Administration from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management from the Methodist University College in Ghana. I have my Ph.D. in social welfare from the School of Social Work at the University of Washington and an International Development certificate from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.

I really enjoy meeting new people, experiencing different cultures, and creating a community of supportive people. As a generally free-spirited and a positive-minded individual, I love to see every human successful and happy in life.

As a young child at the age of 9, I lost my dad, the breadwinner of the family.

In addition to that, I was also at the edge of losing my vision and educational aspirations until I received support from extended family and friends. And it is from my experiences as a former child laborer in the cocoa industry that pushes me to do the work I do today. I would love to see all children gain a better education to be able to control their destiny.

Today, I serve as co-founder and executive director of the Cheerful Hearts Foundation and the founder and national coordinator of Patriots Ghana.

The Cheerful Hearts Foundation is a nonprofit that uses community-based interventions to address child trafficking in the Ghanaian fishing industry through Education, Public Health, and Human Rights initiatives. The foundation has rescued over 700 children from trafficking, provided hundreds of educational scholarships to trafficking victims, and educated over 50,000 residents about child rights, the danger of trafficking, and the long-term benefits of education. 

Patriots Ghana is a national organization that prides itself in uniting all passionate and patriotic Ghanaian citizens and organizations to raise selfless and incorruptible leaders who are committed to building stronger economies and communities by funneling national resources in service and upliftment of the most marginalized in society, especially women and children. 

With both these organizations, I am primarily responsible for the oversight and management of all projects and strategic direction. In my role, I am also responsible for volunteer recruitment, local and international. I’m proud to say that our efforts have involved more than 600 volunteers all over the world who have worked or are working on various community-based interventions, research projects, and study abroad programs in Ghana.

Children and youth are the backbone of every nation. The future largely depends on them and how we prepare them is reflective of our future from today.

Through the work of my organizations, we’ve increased school enrollment and reduced child trafficking by 8%, an equivalent of 706 students in Senya fishing community within 18 months of house-to-house child rights educational campaign in 2015 and 2016 only. 

We have also provided hundreds of educational scholarships to many child laborers, some of whom have completed their undergraduate university education and are currently serving as mentors and teachers for other children in the community. 

I am so proud that we have built a multi-purpose youth and community development center in one of the fishing villages, Nyanyano. Here, over 70 young women get trained on various entrepreneurial skills, afterschool programs help improve the academic performance of hundreds of children each year, and young footballers train in the soccer training facilities. Also, we host numerous community health educational events throughout the year.

My motivation in life is that all people deserve to be happy and live meaningful lives.

Through my years on earth, I have learned that regardless of the material resources that humans strive to obtain, I have never seen the richest people die and be buried with even a car or an airplane. Therefore, I have concluded that we will leave everything behind one day, but joy and fulfillment is to see fellow humans happy and feel uplifted or supported. There is so much joy in my heart when I see others happy and successful, especially those with less privilege.