During my CIDA internship with CAUSE, I acted as the temporary co-Chair in the Sierra Leone Girls Education Network (SLeGEN), which advocates for the implementation of the second and third of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals: to achieve universal primary education and to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.  I understood that I would be helping in local efforts to promote the rights of females of all ages to have equal access to an education.  From here, I began my research by speaking with as many people as I could that were involved in education, including teachers, headmasters or headmistresses, teacher-trainers, students, ministry officials, and other involved stakeholders. 

As I became familiar with the many obstacles that families and individuals faced in their everyday lives, I was forced to re-examine my own position and role in the network.  Being confronted with the challenges that each individual struggles with on a daily basis helped me to reconcile the personal battle brewing in my head about what I thought was right in terms of gender equality and trying to apply it in a cultural context so foreign to me. 

I felt great satisfaction and encouragement when I began to see how capable the people I worked with were in conceptualizing a model for women’s empowerment that was unique to Sierra Leoneans.  Together we conjured up creative new methods and strategies for sensitizing key players on the role of gender in development.  I am grateful for the small role I played as a resource person, incorporating what I have learned over the years on the subject and using my skills as a researcher and facilitator to participate in this process.