Lauren Rossetti | staff writer

At six years old, Anne Fridah Athieno began walking miles to a school in her rural village in Uganda, only to be turned away for not being old or strong enough to make the commute everyday.

After being rejected a few more times, she came back a year later when she was seven though the school did not allow students under eight who lived that far away.

“They saw me and laughed, but they felt like I had love for education,” said Athieno, who is a current doctoral student at Duquesne.

Athieno continued her education and was the first girl in her village to graduate high school and go to college. Now she helps girls in Uganda access education and combat social issues keeping them from school.

“I come from a community where they don’t educate women,” Athieno said. “Education is still seen as a luxury for girls, and this is partly because of the existence of the bride price practices.”

Bride price is a practice where a man marrying a woman or girl must pay the father of the bride, usually in currency or livestock.

“Instead of taking girls to school, most parents see girls as a source of income,” Athieno said.

Athieno’s father was bedridden for most of her life, but it was his support that led to her eventual success.

“There was a lot of pressure on my father,” she said. “[People asked] ‘Why don’t you marry her? You can get the money, and use it to take good care of yourself.’”

But Athieno’s father refused. That was when she promised she would go to college and get a job to take care of him one day.

When she finished high school, Athieno attended Makerere University where she received a bachelor’s degree.

“Immediately after graduation, I got a job that paid me a decent salary. Life became good,” she said.

Athieno went back to her village after college and asked girls if they wanted to go to school. She was able to financially provide for many girls’ educations off her own salary, but her mission was growing.

“I started looking for a way of moving it to the next level,” Athieno said. “How am I going to register an organization to empower girls in a community where girls’ education is not a priority?”

As part of her master’s program in public sector management at Delaware State University, Athieno founded the James Obbo Girls Education Initiative (JOGEI), named after her father.

She carried out research in her village, interviewing teachers, religious leaders and school girls to find out the needs of the community. She then defended her thesis, graduated and registered JOGEI as an non-governmental organization.

Much of the organization’s work revolves around teaching girls in Uganda how to sustain themselves and afford their education through learning how to make jewelry, weave clothes and do hair.

“When they are done with their studies, if they are not able to find jobs because of the high rate of unemployment issue in the country, they have other life skills they can do,” Athieno said.

Athieno was brought to Pittsburgh because of her husband’s job and proximity to the international airport, where she continued her doctoral studies in educational research at Duquesne University.

She hopes to be a role model for other young girls in her country that may not have someone else to look up to.

Inspiring girls is an international goal, and here in Pittsburgh, Girls Inc. is in the business of empowering girls young and old.

“Girls Inc. is an organization where college-aged girls go to elementary schools in the Pittsburgh area to act as role models,” Girls Inc. mentor and merchandise coordinator Sophia Gervase said. “Our goal is to inspire confidence as well as to show them that they can do anything they put their mind to.”

Gervase said giving young girls a role model is of utmost importance.

“A lot of younger girls don’t necessarily have a role model they can follow, so we think it’s important that they can see girls that look like them and have certain passions that connect to theirs and be able to go out and do things,” she said.

Helping young girls isn’t all that Athieno does. Now at Duquesne, in addition to running JOGEI, Athieno works with the Non-Traditional Student Organization to support students coming to school from various backgrounds like students with delayed post-secondary education, older students or transfer students.

“Being non-traditional is a self-identifying term,” Darnell Duncan, a master’s student in the school of education and the president of the Non-Traditional Student Organization said. “If you consider yourself a non-traditional student, we’ll definitely invite you in.”

Duncan said he supports JOGEI by providing Athieno with a group to collaborate and share her ideas with.

“I definitely wanted to make sure that she has a space where she can promote her organization and spread awareness about the issues that are going on in Africa, especially inside her village in Uganda,” Duncan said.

Lauren Rossetti can be reached at rossettil1@duq.edu