Episode 049: The Fistula Foundation with Habiba Corodhia Mohamed
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Habiba C Mohamed is a social change activator, and trained psychotherapist advocating for women’s bio-psychosocial health and rights. Ms Mohamed supports marginalized women and girls to tap into their inner strengths and amplify their potential and impact in society.
Habiba Mohamed works with Fistula Foundation as the Regional Director, Programs (Africa, Asia). Habiba Joined the Foundation in 2014 as the outreach manager. In this role, she designed and spearheaded the community strategy for the Fistula Foundation Treatment Network in Kenya. Later, she was promoted to country director to oversee the entire network of hospital and community partners. Her work has contributed to provision of fistula surgeries, and restoring of dignity to more than 11,000 women in the last 8 years. In her role as regional director of programs, Habiba is responsible for the expansion of the treatment network model throughout the African region.
Before joining the Fistula Foundation, Ms. Mohamed worked on the fistula program for nearly a decade. She is the Founder and Lead Director of Women and Development Against Distress in Africa (WADADIA), a nonprofit organization that advocates for sexual reproductive health and rights for the marginalized women. Since establishing the organization in the year 2006, she has been actively involved in the formulation of policies, procedures and strategies that has led to its growth and expansion. Besides her work with WADADIA, Habiba also supported a community program funded by the United Nations Population Fund for six years, and served as a consultant program specialist for One By One, a US-based nonprofit focused on fistula treatment. She has worked and volunteered with several other organizations, giving her an in-depth understanding of community dynamics and engagement.
Ms Mohamed was the lead consultant in the development of the female genital fistula training curriculum for community health volunteers in Kenya, and a contributor for the new global fistula guidance. She is the author of the psychosocial effects of obstetric fistula on young mothers in Western Kenya, obstetric fistula post-repair follow up; an outreach workers perspective, and the obstetric fistula community-based assessment tool (OF-COMBAT) – a verbal screening tool, that has helped reduce the number of women being referred to fistula treatment centers with other forms of incontinences.
Ms Mohamed began her career as a veterinarian, assisting livestock farmers in Western Kenya. Through this close contact with the community, she began to see the social challenges faced by rural, communities and became passionate about working with marginalized women. She has a higher diploma in Social Work and Community Development, a first and a master’s degree in counseling psychology and is an ongoing PhD candidate of counselling psychology at Kenyatta University.
Links:
https://fistulafoundation.org/
https://wadadia-nonprofits.org/
https://www.facebook.com/fistulafoundation/
