How does NGO training empower women learners in diverse Somali Diaspora?
Date & Time: November 04, 2015 | 08:15 PM – 09:15 PM
Location: 101 Old Botany
Non-governmental organization (NGO) field workers believe they are empowering Somali women through training with refugees and recent immigrants in Dadaab, Kenya and Toronto, Canada. Empowerment is a contested term, with some NGO educators presenting women’s empowerment as participation in existing social structures and more efficient performance of their traditional roles, while others argue empowerment is related to social transformation and change. Somali refugee women conceptualize their own empowerment as they balance (re)connecting and (re)structuring families and communities after displacement. This presentation discusses dissertation research to understand how empowerment is interpreted in NGO training with Somali women in Dadaab and Toronto and subsequently internalized, reappropriated, and/or contested by learners.
Allyson Krupar has over seven years’ experience in research, project development, monitoring and evaluation in local organizations worldwide, specifically focusing on projects related to education for professionals, post-secondary education, and education for older learners who have not completed traditional formal schooling. Ms. Krupar has worked on education and human rights programs in the US, conflict resolution training in Liberia, health education in Uganda, and technology and education worldwide. She has taught at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul and worked in distance and e-learning at Makerere University's Infectious Disease Institute in Kampala, Uganda and American University. She recently worked as a Visiting Researcher with RET, an international organization focusing on post-primary education for displaced people, where she conducted impact evaluation of programming and independent research towards her dissertation. She also is an Adjunct Instructor with American University’s School for Professional and Extended Studies. Ms. Krupar holds a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and a Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on conflict resolution, human rights law and anthropology from the School of International Service at American University. Currently, she is a Doctoral Candidate in Adult Education and Comparative International Education at Penn State University.
This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.