Unlocking the Diaspora’s Potential, One Woman At A Time

If I were to tell a 10-year old girl in Middle America that she, the daughter of African immigrants, would one day start her own organization focused on women and girls like her and it would one day be recognized by the White House, she probably wouldn’t believe me.  She’d probably think it would be just a dream because she’d never seen it happen before.  Until now.

As a member of the Horn of Africa diaspora, as an Eritrean-American, and as the founder of the Diaspora African Women’s Network, I am humbled and honored to be selected as a White House Champion of Change.  I am proud to share my story & offer you a glimpse into a community I care so much about.  I am even more proud to share this moment with my fellow Horn of Africa diaspora colleagues, who I know also share the same passion for this region as I do. 

When most people hear of the Horn of Africa, they tend to think of chillingly negative images of suffering, famine and war. Maybe even pirates or Black Hawk Down.  They miss the brighter moments of opportunity, success & resilience.  The Horn of Africa is a beautifully proud, complex, and rich region. But it’s had limited success in showing its strengths against these negative stereotypes.

I am the daughter of Eritrean immigrants. My parents came to the States in the late 1960s for education and work.  I was raised to be proud of my heritage and developed an early and loving relationship with our homeland. I learned everything I could about our history, culture, language and our 30-year struggle for independence from Ethiopia. There were countless days I’d share Eritrea’s story with as many people as I could.  It was a love affair of the best kind.

Ultimately, I took my love and tested it by moving to Eritrea to work for two years.  It was there I learned that I was just as much American as I was Eritrean, that I carried habits from both worlds, and that I didn’t have to pick one over the other to define who I was.  I could have and enjoy both!  

Education as a Key to Eradicating Poverty

I am honored and humbled to be a White House Champion of Change. I arrived in the United States as an Ethiopian immigrant at the age of 17 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Now I work as a patent examiner for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Still, one of my most important accomplishments is serving as the president of a dynamic non-profit organization called Wegene Ethiopian Foundation (WEF), which I founded with the help of my friends and family members in the year 2000.

I am extremely grateful for the security, opportunity for education, and better life my adoptive country, the United States, has provided me and my family. I believe it is my privilege and duty to give back to both my birth country and the U.S. in any way I can. As a result, it is especially rewarding to be part of a foundation that provides fundamental change to less fortunate families sustaining themselves at the price of one cup of coffee per day and to make a difference for these families and their communities. This is really the finest sort of empowerment, where we all can be partners and the ownership belongs to our partners who benefit from the program. As a partner of Wegene, I have the opportunity to make a difference at a personal level. This offers me fulfillment and civic satisfaction beyond imagination. Wegene’s vision and strategy is simple because the resources are deliverable and the overhead cost is near to nothing. Additionally, almost everyone involved is donating their time, money, and contacts in kind to this noble work.

Through a sustainable manner, Wegene’s mission is to improve the everyday lives of less fortunate and disadvantaged children and their families in Ethiopia. This mission is based on the philosophy that if hardworking, destitute families are given the opportunity, tools, and resources to improve their lives, they will have a stepping stone to emerge from the poverty cycle and give their children better educational opportunities in order to lead happier, healthier lives. Wegene creates opportunities for families to become self-sufficient through vocational training and small start-up grants.

Ready to Read: Advocating for Literacy in Today's Youth

I am humbled to have been selected as a Champion of Change and to have the opportunity to represent the achievements of American diaspora communities with roots in the Horn Africa. The Horn of Africa and specifically Somalia, where I was born, is a region that is deeply impacted by political instability, extreme poverty and refugee crises. Immigrants and refugees from Somalia who come to the United States have to overcome not only the trauma of forced migration and civil war but many settle in high poverty communities where they struggle along with their fellow Americans to emerge from a cycle of intergenerational poverty. My interest in helping Somali refugees and low-income Americans to emerge from poverty and improve future outcomes for their children led me to join Columbus Metropolitan Library Ready to Read Corps.

As part of the Ready to Read Corps, I take the library into at-risk communities to teach parents and caregivers of children between the ages of 0-to-5 on how to be their child’s first teacher and prepare their children for kindergarten. We teach parents to develop their child’s literacy skills and show parents how taking little steps can have an impact on preparing a child to succeed in school. To reach low-income parents we work with food pantries, preschools, churches, social service offices, mosques, hospitals, schools, high school teen parent program, and we even hold trainings in people’s homes. We bring the library to the community and work with diverse low-income populations in Columbus, Ohio, which is home to the second largest Somali immigrant and refugee community in the United States.

In some local schools, 40% of the children entering kindergarten are not adequately prepared to succeed in school, according to the Ohio Department of Education’s Kindergarten Readiness Assessment Literacy (KRA-L) scores. In some local immigrant neighborhoods, that score is as high as 77%. These early inequalities in school preparation have been proven in numerous research studies to adversely impact a child’s academic and lifelong success because children are continually attempting to catch up to their more affluent peers. The Ready to Read Corps of Columbus Metropolitan Library is an innovative early literacy program that works to prevent these persisting educational inequalities by educating and empowering parents and is an integral component in the fight against poverty.

To date, Columbus Metropolitan Library has raised almost $1.5 million to fund the Ready to Read Corps – nearly $1 million from grants and the rest were donations from United Way of Central Ohio, the Siemer Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase and Nationwide Insurance Foundation. I believe that education is the great equalizer and I am grateful that Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Ready to Read Corps has allowed me this wonderful opportunity to make such a positive impact in the community.