Soheir Abdelrahman

Egypt

PhD Rural Sociology

University of Missouri

Soheir grew up in a family of 8 girls and 2 boys and parents who valued education. Her father was a school principal and her mother a teacher. She was educated at the College of Agriculture of Alexandria University(B.S.and M.S) and Iowa State University. As an undergraduate volunteer(and afterwards), she taught literacy classes for women. She has worked with rural women since her career began. She was an extension agent in the Alexandria regional office of the Ministry of Agriculture, served as the director of the Rural Women's Development Subdivision in that office, and as a researcher in the Agricultural Extension Research and Rural Development Institute, El-Sabahia station, near Alexandria, and is on leave from that position. Her Ph.D. dissertion is entitled An Equivalent Study of the Participation of Rural Women in Rural Development Projects in Egypt and will rely on field work in Egypt. She will spend part of her MMMF grant to collect her data in Egypt and part for living expenses when she returns to the US. When she returns to Egypt, she wants to continue to work with rural women and to do research on public policy issues that contribute to their empowerment.

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Hebret Berhe

Eritrea

PhD International Development

Brandeis University

Hebret was educated in Eritrea and graduated from Addis Ababa University (formerly Haile Selassie I University).  She held a number of positions in education and industry and became active in the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front after losing her first husband and two brothers in the long war for Eritrean independence.  She married again and has two children.  During the war, she fought as a soldier and worked as a social worker, teacher, organizer, and administrator.  Since independence (1991), she has been First Secretary of the Social Development Affairs section of the Eritrean Embassy in Addis Ababa and is on study leave from that position. 

The war led Eritirean women into new roles, as participants in the war at every level and as employees in factories, hospitals, schools, and business offices.  She believes that their new status in society should be preserved: they should not return to their traditional subordinate roles.  She chose to study at Brandeis because of her interest in integrating women into the development process.  Her thesis will explore the demobilization of women combatants and their reintegration into Eritrean society, identifying the services they need, including primary health care and family planning, nutrition education, and training for the management of small enterprises.  She hopes to set up a Women Veterans Organization and assist in other ways in the further empowerment of women in Eritrea.

She writes:  "Eritrean women fought for the independence of their country alongside their men. They constituted 30% of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front and served at every level. This is a major break with the traditional roles to which Eritrean women were relegated.  My main concern is to help these women avoid going back to traditional subordinate roles."

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Orlean Brown

Jamaica

PhD Education

Howard University

Orleon's interest in special education began when she was a schoolgirl.  She studied special education at a teacher training college and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica; she attended the latter on a scholarship from the Government of the Netherlands.  She has been a teacher of mentally retarded children and a supervisor of teachers. She was a regional coordinator for the Jamaica Special Olympics, did fundraising for the Jamaica Association for the Mentally Retarded, and did testing and planning for 4 to 18 year old mentally retarded persons.

Her work at Howard will equip her to be a school psychologist and thus able to assess the capabilities of students and plan programs that will enable them to reach their highest potential. As a school psychologist, she hopes "to be a catalyst in the development of educational programs for women and children," especially in rural areas.  She is committed to rural educational development.

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Olga Generalova-Kutuzova

Russia

Certificate Public Administration

American University

Olga grew up in Yaroslavl, an industrial city of 700,000 on the Volga River in a family that encouraged education.  She studied English in school and received a degree in chemical engineering at her city's politechnic institute.  She also studied briefly at Indiana University (English language) and the University of California in Riverside (NGO management).  She organized a small manufacturing business, developed a lecture program to train women managers for small businesses, and worked in the Moscow office of the Parliament member from her district.  While she has been at American University, she has worked with the UN Economic Development Program.  She was awarded a Hubert Humphrey fellowship for U.S. study in 1994-95.
Soon after she completed her formal education, she worked for a chemical workers union and became active in the People's Front, the first Russian democratic movement against the communist party.  She served on the boards of groups of business leaders,  provided opportunities for women in her own business,  and helped organize non-profit organizations.  She is deeply interested in democratic and economic reforms in Russia.
She writes, "From the beginning of my business, I thought about unemployed women.  At that time, there were no attempts to solve the problem on the government level. In my small business, I gave work first to ten unemployed women...then we added two senior women...and then 20 schoolgirls, working five hours a week after school...Later I organized educational seminars for women about managing small businesses."
Olga will use her MMMF grant to pay tuition so that she can complete the requirements of a certificate from A.U., an important professional credential to her.

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Sophia Makhubu

South-Africa

PhD Nursing

University of Illinois

Sophia grew up in a small town in South Africa in a family of 9 children.  Her parents were committed to education for their children although they were not educated themselves.  An award after grade 8 enabled her to attend secondary school.  She earned a diploma in nursing in Pretoria and one in midwifery in Durban and used her income to help educate her younger siblings.   She received fellowships that enabled her to study for the B.S. and M.S. in Nursing in the United States in the 1980s and at the University of Illinois in the 1990s.  She will use her MMMF grant to support her during the completion of her dissertation,  "Peer Education and Support for AIDS Prevention among South African Women." It will report field research in a black township.  She will return to South Africa to a position as AIDS Program Director in the regional office of a national organization in Johannesburg.

Most of her professional career has been in Swaziland where she worked as a staff nurse at a rural public health center, then at the Swaziland Institute of Health Sciences--as a lecturer, supervisor, and coordinator for midwifery and family planning activities.  In Chicago, she has volunteered in projects related to South Africa and has taken the lead in efforts to reduce the abuse of women, increase the immunization of children, and educate women about the prevention of AIDS.   When she returns home, she looks forward to continuing her career in community based primary health care and women's health, with emphasis on AIDS, traumatic stress, and physical abuse.

She returned to South Africa during the summer of 1995.  She revisited a child abuse program, and planned an AIDS project.  The latter is a community-based AIDS prevention (education) program in three communities in the East Rand (Kwa-Thema, Tsakane, and Duduza), to be based in the Pholosong hospital in Tsakane.  The project will train peer counsellors who will, in turn, train others. Sophie started things off during the summer and fall of 1995 and will return to direct it after completing her dissertation.   Her target return date is summer 1996.

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Margaret Mbilizi

Malawi

PhD Education. Policy Studies

Indiana University

Margaret grew up in a small city in Malawi, the daughter of a woman who was director of a department store and a leader in community services.  She received an undergraduate degree and an Ed.M. from the University of Malawi and received a government of Malawi fellowship for U.S. study that enabled her to come to Indiana University.  Her dissertation will compare the effects on the educational and occupational aspirations of girls attending (1) a single-sex secondary school and (2) a mixed-sex secondary school in Malawi. 
Shortly after graduating from college, she organized fund-raising for a scholarship for girls.  Her career began with teaching in three secondary schools; she continued as assistant registrar of the University of Malawi, where she organized a Working Group for Women.  She hopes to continue to advances the women's movement in Malawi and to become a policy analyst and policy maker in areas that affect women and girls.

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