In 2006, Sara Daniel was a busy college student who managed to find the time to volunteer with the Heartland Alliance Marjorie Kovler Center as an interpreter. After graduation, she accepted a full-time position with the Kovler Center and made the transition from volunteer to employee. Two and a half years later, Sara was still working with Kovler and contemplating a return to the classroom to earn her master’s in public health.

Before she returned to campus life, Sara wanted an international volunteer experience, one that combined both her passion for empowering women and for building the capacity of the organizations that serve them. Enter Heartland Alliance’s international program: Sara was offered a six-month volunteer position in Ethiopia. This opportunity would bring together both her professional interests and her culture.

“The opportunity was quite serendipitous,” says Sara, who emigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was a child. Returning, this time as a volunteer with Heartland Alliance, was an opportunity for her to give back while viewing the land of her birth in a different light.

According to research conducted by the United Nations, 71 percent of married women in Ethiopia report being abused by their partners during the course of their relationships. Furthermore, nine out of ten of these abused women believe it is acceptable to be beaten or physically abused by their husbands. 

Heartland Alliance works in Ethiopia, in conjunction with local and international partners, by organizing poor and vulnerable women and introducing them to self-empowerment groups where they are able to develop business and management skills and work through their trauma. With this work, Heartland hopes to counteract this culture of violence.

As a volunteer, Sara was expected to monitor and evaluate the program’s progress. She communicated often with local staff and improved the way they worked and communicated with local women. In addition, she was responsible for working with staff to develop the group counseling programs. “We’d go out to the site to see the real issues people were facing,” she says. “We prepared training on self-care for participants. We had an art and a knitting group for children.”

Sara admits that being Ethiopian provided her with a very different volunteer experience.

“Because I spoke the language and looked like everyone else, I was able to experience things a traditional foreigner living there would not,” she says. However, she concedes that her view of Ethiopia was a bit sheltered and that, during her stay, it changed.

“I came to the U.S. when I was a child,” she says. “My perception was that of a child; it was idealistic to a certain extent. As an adult, I was really able to see the challenges the country and the people face. I didn’t really understand the attitude toward women and young girls and the difficulties that poor women face.”

Though Ethiopia’s gender hierarchies often made Sara “question some of the cultural traditions there,” her volunteer experience fulfilled her in a way she never thought possible.

“Working with the staff, seeing their motivation and work ethic was great,” she says. “But, the most memorable part was actually meeting these women and children, talking with them and seeing how they changed with the support of the program.”