Re-imagining Women Leadership Through Inclusive Community Engagement

The Vision of Inclusive Community Engagement

This book describes and illustrates the work of Higher Education Resource Services-East Africa (HERS-EA). A non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Kampala, Uganda, HERS-EA seeks to ensure that women and men from all communities of East Africa—from villages to universities—will be equal partners in shaping the structural transformation necessary for achieving economic and social development. HERS-EA works to accomplish its vision of parity by increasing the percentage of women in leadership roles in higher education institutions (HEIs) and significantly increasing the number of girls and women who complete primary, secondary, and tertiary education. It pursues its goals in East Africa through a set of activities focused on connecting university- trained researchers and community-based women in a variety of roles related to development and education so that together they can advance the success of women and their communities in the region. A core element of this work is the HERS-EA Multi-tier Model of Women Leadership, an innovative approach to bringing together women across the tiers of activity in community development to work in reciprocal collaborations. The model infuses the curriculum of the annual HERS-EA Academy and undergirds HERS-EA projects of engaged scholarship for regional development in East Africa. This book examines how engaged scholarship—research and knowledge development that link scholars and communities—benefits all stakeholders and can be an especially powerful vehicle for creating leadership opportunities for women across multiple tiers of these communities.

Engaged scholarship (distinguished from conventional academic research) can be described as “a dynamic process of building bridges between theory and practice that is accomplished through discovery, integration, application, and teaching” (Paynter, 2014). The critically distinctive feature of these activities is their association with universities and individual scholars who are committed to the principles of the engaged university movement. This movement promotes research that enriches universities’ knowledge production, while connecting directly with community members. It seeks to contribute to the well-being of the research “subjects” through the outcomes of project activities. Examinations of the necessity of such work for the success of inclusive community development run through each section of the book. Two sample projects in the concluding chapters illustrate the way in which the innovative HERS-EA Multi-tier Model of Women Leadership builds links through collaborative and mutually beneficial activity.

The signature program of the organization is the HERS-EA Academy, a weeklong leadership course that brings together women faculty preparing to lead differently and to undertake greater responsibilities at their institutions and in their research communities. The Academy curriculum is regularly reviewed with input from participants, published research on women’s issues, and lessons learned from other organizations, including those that have contributed to this book. The 20–30 women in each cohort have intensive interaction with senior women academics from African universities, as well as European and North American institutions. The broad network of women who have completed the HERS-EA Academy since 2017, combined with those who have been members of the faculty, constitute a platform for continuing mentoring and collaborative research focused on advancing women in East Africa. The critical link between this network of university-affiliated women and women with whom they engage as part of their community-based research is the HERS-EA Multi-Tier Model of Women Leadership development. This action-oriented approach is in use in the HERS-EA community engagement projects and is foundational to the leadership curriculum of the HERS-EA Academy.

HERS-EA was founded in August 2014 by African-born women in diaspora who brought together skills and experience gained in the Western world, combined with the passion for change in their home countries. The leaders of the organization are alumnae of the HERS Institute, based in Denver, Colorado. HERS has worked collaboratively to support the development of this “sister” organization. Since launching its first flagship leadership Academy in 2017, HERS-EA has trained over 170 women in higher education and brought together over 50 researchers from 15 HEIs in Burundi, Canada, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States. HERS-EA has also developed engagements with grassroots community groups in working on food security and menstrual hygiene management (MHM); established partnerships with HEIs in the seven African countries; and collaborated with government, inter-governmental, and non-governmental organizations.

HERS-EA is currently conducting assessments of the impact of their projects for partnering communities. So far, the organization has utilized testimonies and formal evaluations. Some of the analysis has already been disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, including the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES), and the Journal of The African Women Studies Centre using assessment indexes such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future’s Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). This volume brings together examples of the sort of research and field application that undergirds the innovative HERS-EA Multi-tier Women Leadership Model. The book also documents the challenges inherent in seeking to implement changes in HEIs that will better support women leaders in academia, especially as they implement inclusive community engagement.

Rethinking Poverty, Development, and Education

The authors of this volume are faculty and members of the alumnae network of the HERS-EA Academy. They include scholars and administrators residing in African countries, white researchers (men and women) in the West, and African (Black and White) academics in diaspora—all united by the conviction that current “development” models and related approaches to education systems must be transformed. They collectively argue that Western-oriented approaches to education must be interrogated because they are informed by narrowly defined parameters that do not include lived experiences at the margins of formal schooling systems. Needed instead, the authors argue, are leadership models, community engagement protocols, and impact assessment policies that require culturally specific approaches, led by African scholars and community leaders, especially women. Of equal importance, a new perspective is needed to understand “poverty” and “the poor”: a shift from seeing cash-strapped “poor” women as targets of improvement to engaging them as agents of empowerment. The depth of knowledge, skillsets, and diversity of contributing authors enhances the relevance of this book to global audiences of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Moreover, the growing social unrest in Western countries that stems from the neglect of marginalized communities (Ince et al., 2023; Holdo & Bengtsson, 2020) and increasing integration of Indigenous knowledge in global policies (Mbah et al., 2021) indicate that researchers and policymakers in Western countries also stand to benefit from the wealth of knowledge, skills, and experiences that are brought together in this book.

Research shows little change in the pervasive nature of poverty in East Africa. At this point there is a question as to the contribution that universities in Africa are making toward poverty reduction, and how changes in the university system should be undertaken. Although there is much discussion, including critiques of Western epistemology, managerialism, and lack of African-specific standards of scientific quality, there is rarely a mention outside of feminist literature that more than half of Africa’s population is routinely disadvantaged and then dismissed from the conversation. For nearly three decades, there have been repeated declarations about gender equity, calls for women’s development to relieve poverty in Africa, and summons for applied research at African universities. Today little change has come to universities. For most of the population, economic gains have been small. The comparative poverty of women and girls—versus that of men and boys—has remained unaltered. Generally, the narrative seems to be that poverty is everywhere, women’s marginalization is natural, and under-resourced universities are overwhelmed and cannot do much more.

HEIs in East Africa (and Africa generally) are not producing research and researchers in the quantities needed. Their academic staff are also not targeting research and engagement with issues resulting in broader economic development and higher standards of living for the nation as a whole. There is a gap in the number of faculty needed to serve the burgeoning youth population. There is a huge population of youths and older adults that has not been encouraged and supported to complete primary and secondary education, thus creating an even greater shortage of potential faculty. Gender discrimination across all levels of the education systems is reflected in and continued by the HEIs—where the number of women is low and those who have persevered find little support to stay and advance. Transforming institutions to address these issues requires an equitable reallocation of the resources and power within the institutions. Leaders who have lived knowledge of these problems—especially women—must be engaged partners in the co-creation of this transformation, with male allies within the systems and across the broader society. Only by addressing gender discrimination and gender inequity will East Africa be able to address this cascade of issues. Only by creating new forms of women’s leadership will East Africa find the talent needed to achieve sustainable success in raising the economic and social outlook of the region.

Re-imagining Women Leadership for African Development

Into this environment, HERS-EA steps forward with a bold vision for addressing both university transformation and economic development by employing inclusive engagement. By making women central rather than marginal and by connecting rather than segmenting groups of women, the HERS-EA Multi-tier Model of Women Leadership offers a way to shift women from being seen as helpful objects to being leaders of enterprises designed to leverage women’s talents for the advancement of the region. Women of HERS-EA know the statistics on continued poverty in East Africa. They are all too aware of the well-founded critiques of HEIs failing to meet needs for development-related research and educational advancement. HERS-EA women know that grassroots communities of East Africa cannot wait until institutions are transformed to meet their needs. Indeed, these institutions can only be transformed if the paradigm of poverty alleviation is shifted to stop treating these communities, especially the women and girls, as recipients of help. Committed to this transformation, they work on the ground level, where, with colleagues committed to engaged scholarship and community women partners, they seek to address economic stability, grounded in food security; educational attainment for children and adults; and leadership and decision-making authority for women.

Women and other marginalized groups must be empowered as agents and shapers of change. They must contribute their resources—information, perspectives, and lived knowledge of their challenges—to the creation of new solutions and new structures for action. This shift, this focus on creating change agents within and outside of current HEIs, is at the core of the HERS-EA approach. It is central to the curriculum of the signature leadership program for women in higher education, the HERS-EA Academy. It is the basis for the HERS-EA innovative Multi-tier Model for Women Leadership through inclusive engagement.