Success Stories

Tawina Jane Kopa-Kamanga, 2011 AWARD Fellow, Malawi

Tawina Jane Kopa-Kamanga was recently awarded a US$10,000 grant from the Public Health Institute (PHI) through its Adolescent Girls’ Advocacy and Leadership Institute (AGALI). The PHI is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting health, well-being, and quality of life for people throughout California, across the U.S. and around the world.

As one of only four candidates to receive the grant, Kopa-Kamanga was invited to take advocacy and leadership training by AGALI in August, and is now a 2011 AGALI Fellow. AGALI promotes global health and development by enhancing the capacity of Latin American and African leaders to improve the health, education, and livelihoods of adolescent girls and young women. Kopa-Kamanga’s project, which will be implemented through an NGO called SACCODE-Trust, involves training adolescent girls in the areas of education, rights and responsibilities, sexual and reproductive health, and participatory monitoring and evaluation. She was recently interviewed by a local newspaper in connection with becoming an AWARD Fellow.

Read the newspaper clippings here and here.

For more information about PHI, visit http://phi.org/about/index.html.

Maria Alexandra Jorge, 2009 AWARD Fellow, Mozambique

Maria Alexandra Jorge, gene bank manager at ILRI, was recently interviewed in connection with a two-day event hosted by the ILRI Board of Trustees called liveSTOCK Exchange, which was held to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. She spoke about ILRI’s forage research and the importance of the forage seeds gene bank, which is hosted at the ILRI campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

For the full text of the interview, visit ILRI's Blog.

Sónia Maciel, 2008 AWARD Fellow, Mozambique

Sónia Maciel recently accepted a position as Regional Program Manager at the Aga Khan Foundation in Mozambique. While working on their Coastal Rural Support Program in Cabo Delgado, she will continue her PhD studies.

In her new role, she has been busy with donor reports, a mid-term strategy review, and supporting the preparation of board papers for the CEO. Maciel is excited to take on the challenges of this job, since it will advance her personal and professional growth. “I am dealing with agriculture and livestock development, as well as other social areas of the program: health, water and sanitation, economic development (market development, food security initiatives, crafts, human-animal conflict), civil society and local governance, community-based saving groups, monitoring and evaluation, and administration and financial matters. I was drawn by the possibility of making a difference and making things happen!”

Maciel has also recently published a paper on the reproductive performance of Nguni cattle in southern Mozambique in the Journal of Tropical Animal Health and Production.

Read her full profile.

Hedwig Nenkari, 2008 AWARD Fellow, Kenya

Hedwig Nenkari is one of seven Kenyans to be chosen to attend the U.S. Department of State Food Security Fellowship Program for 2011. Participants will spend time with U.S. counterparts in order to learn how professionals in an established democracy handle agricultural issues. Nenkari and her colleagues will spend four weeks at Oklahoma State University and one week in Washington DC on the way back to Kenya.

She was recently featured on Kenya's Citizen TV. Watch the TV clip here.

Elizabeth Odoyo, 2010 AWARD Fellow, Kenya

Elizabeth Odoyo credits AWARD’s Dr. Josephine Songa with encouraging her to send an abstract to a science congress in Cape Town South Africa, which was accepted. The title of her paper was “Indigenous Knowledge for Sustainable Development using an Ecologically Based Approach”. “My message was to create awareness by making the people connect with the environment, informing and engaging them on climate change issues linked to traditional knowledge,” Odoyo says. “I thank AWARD for sponsoring me to attend this world congress, which attracted 416 delegates from over 40 countries. I hope to present a paper in the upcoming world summit, which will take place in Belgium in 2014.”

Vettes Kalema, 2010 AWARD Fellow, Uganda

Vettes Kalema has accepted a position as a technical advisor with the Sustainable Land Management Program. She is working on two projects that address the problems of sustainability, which are funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Fund, and the Government of Uganda. “The projects are addressing the problems of sustainability not only in woodlands but in the whole ecosystems, and are contributing toward the food security and improved livelihoods of rural people,” said Kalema. “I am happy to announce that I will be going to Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri early next year for my research attachment. Also, I am happy to report that I have now reached the seventh step on my life purpose roadmap”.