Thanks to a generous donation from an anonymous alum, The Center for Gender Equity was able to have its first Gender Equity Fellowship in the Summer of 2024. Chosen from a competitive application process, our inaugural Fellows, Theodora Chacharone '25 and Abby-Lee Sanogo '26, spent two months developing a baseline understanding of the Center for Gender Equity, gender equity in a national and international context, feminist praxis, maternal health outcomes, and Sierra Leone. Beyond the content, Rita Jones, the Director of the Center for Gender Equity also developed a curriculum that built in individual identity and skill development and opportunities for the Fellows to get to know one another from the first days of the Fellowship.
The Center intentionally connected the Fellows with the Mothers of Sierra Leone (MOSL) Global Social Impact Project. The Center has been connected with one of the faculty leads of MOSL, Profession Fathima Wakeel, an expert in Maternal and Child Health, since Professor Wakeel arrived at Lehigh, and we have collaborated on different panels and community-based and -developed engagement. Additionally, the MOSL work to support Sierra Leonians in telling and sharing their own stories about reducing maternal and child mortality is grounded in gender equity.
The Fellows then spent time learning more about the MOSL team from MOSL faculty and Fellows. They learned how to code and analyze qualitative data from ongoing research Sierra Leonean focus groups, helping the MOSL team members enhance their filmmaking and storytelling. Each Fellow also produced their own film to support the MOSL mission, while also incorporate learnings from the Gender Equity Fellowship.
Links to and titles of the films they made:
From our fellows:
"Theodora created a film on the importance of strong relationships between healthcare professionals and their patients in Magbenteh Community Hospital. Abby-Lee’s film highlighted the comprehensive, holistic, and vocational care given by staff in the Aberdeen Women’s Centre. We used Adobe Premiere Pro to create these films with the hope to use them as educational modules for global health students. Additionally, Theodora helped revitalize the team’s Instagram account (@mothersofsierraleone) by highlighting previous short films produced by other team members and reorganizing the profile’s format to better align with the website."
"Towards the end of the fellowship, we assisted in the team’s fieldwork preparation; we printed t-shirts and onesies in the Wilbur Powerhouse Design Lab that will be brought to health clinics in Sierra Leone. Ultimately, we were able to assist the MOSL team in their efforts of improving maternal health through documentary storytelling while simultaneously gaining technical skills in data science and filmmaking. We are appreciative of Lehigh University’s Center for Gender Equity, Office of Creative Inquiry, the Mothers of Sierra Leone team (including our Sierra Leonean research partners), and the Library & Technology Services’ Digital Media Studio for providing us the opportunity and assisting in our summer work. Lastly, thank you to our generous donor for making this fellowship possible."