In Ireland, Eisenhower Fellows Salome Mbugua (Ireland 2010) and Oonagh McPhillips (Ireland 2016) work in separate (and sometimes opposite) areas of advocacy and government respectively.  But they have recently come together to work on developing an important new law to combat hate speech.  A researcher, gender equality activist and human rights advocate, Salome was born in Kenya and has lived in Ireland since 1994. She founded AkiDwA (Swahili for “sisterhood”), The Migrant Women’s Network, in 2001 to address isolation, racism ...

By Barbra Nyangairi (Zimbabwe 2016) Through the organization that I co-founded—the Deaf Zimbabwe Trust—we are currently working on increasing access to quality education for children and young people with deafness, through advocacy for policy reform and placement of deaf young people in higher education institutions. We aim to impact more than 40,000 children who are deaf and hard of hearing and, more broadly, 600,000 children with disabilities. I am passionate about the work I do because it changes the lives of ...

Harare, Zimbabwe In the midst of a global movement of women taking strides towards political leadership, Chitsike uncovered the barriers that prevent women from succeeding in her country. After her fellowship ended in the fall of 2015, Chitsike secured funding to research why women were reluctant to take on political leadership roles. Even though Zimbabwean women make up 52% of the population, government, political parties and decision-making bodies fail to engage and encourage women to participate in politics. Despite the ...