Malmberg Fellow Spotlight: Lebohang Matela-Tale
Interviewed by Susan Wiedel
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Lebohang Matela-Tale |
The 2014-2015 Carl Malmberg Memorial Scholarship in African Studies was awarded to Ms. Lebohang Matela-Tale from Lesotho. Trained as a Gender and Social Support Coordinator with extensive experience in the HIV-AIDS area, Ms. Matela-Tale worked with the Christian Council of Lesotho and the FOCCISA Health and Gender Justice Network. She also taught in English at the high school-level. Ms. Matela-Tale recently founded and is the president of the Corridors of Hope Gender Association of Lesotho (a NGO) and has plans for establishing a center in Lesotho to support the education of women in the area of gender-based violence. She is in residence as a Malmberg Fellow during the fall 2014 term. Her Fellowship includes an array of educational opportunities on Pitt’s Oakland campus.
Following is an interview with Ms. Matela-Tale:
1.) So how are you enjoying Pitt?
Lebohang: I’m enjoying it. Now I know where to find my classes, know where to go. I know about the places around the city, I have maps. It’s not like it was when I first came here.
2.) How was it when you first came here?
Lebohang: It was challenging, overwhelming. I come from a very small country with no technology so when I first came here, I was given directions so I know which buses to take. But I think at the moment I am dealing with these changes well.
3.) So in Lesotho you worked with the Health and Gender Justice Network?
Lebohang: The original Health and Gender Justice Network is in Zambia. I coordinate and design the gender and health programs in 11 countries in southern Africa through the church councils. We have what we call Christian Councils in every country.
4.) What do these programs do exactly?
Lebohang: We assist the churches in southern Africa with the incorporation of gender and health issues education into their services. For example, with HIV/AIDS, the church was stigmatizing and condemning people for the disease. So what we do is provide enough education to the church, build its capacity to deal with HIV/AIDS issues, and help them design and implement the programs, and monitor their progress. Now with the challenges faced by the LGBT community, we make sure we provide enough information to the church, train them, and then provide teaching aids and workshops in order to change the message in churches and try to accommodate the LGBT community.
5.) How much of an issue is this divide between the position of churches and what the people need?
Lebohang: It is a very big issue. In many countries people are being persecuted because of their sexual identity. Not every church is inclusive, especially towards people with HIV/AIDS. They don’t feel like they are accommodated in churches, there still is stigma. The churches are not close to the people, so we are trying to create safe spaces for people in churches.
6.) Besides your involvement in these programs, you are also the founder and president of the Corridors of Hope Gender Association of Lesotho. Tell me about that.
Lebohang: That is a local NGO that I started in 2012. Basically, when I was working for Christian Council of Lesotho, I would visit communities where I found an absence of talk about women’s health issues. Women’s health issued were not addressed, and as a gender activist, I wanted to establish a NGO that would enable me to reach out to those women and girls and try to empower them, teach them about their sexuality and reproductive rights and other health and gender issues.
7.) In what kind of situation are the majority of the women and girls you work with?
Lebohang: Some of them are married, some of them are widowed, some of them are divorced. It is really a mixture. At first I was targeting women living in homes with domestic violence and all girls regardless of their domestic life. As I did more work and developed the program in other districts, I found that even the single and widowed women who are not living in homes with domestic violence still need help, especially with respect to women’s empowerment. So I brought those women together and created support groups in their communities. Together, they make sure that they are taking care of each other, those who are sick, those who have problems, those who are victims or in danger of becoming victims of domestic violence. For the women’s empowerment, we try to develop self-reliance projects run by the support group so that they can assist each other financially if necessary.
8.) Are there not many organizations like that?
Lebohang: You know there are organizations but they don’t get things done. As a gender activist I try to make sure that things get done, but in those other organizations, people are solely focused on getting funding and are not making an impact on the people they should be helping. They just make sure they have enough funding to run and to fill their own salaries. So for me it’s so painful to see people from these organizations using people who are HIV positive or sexually abused to get money, and they are not really helping them. At the moment I am doing research on the effectiveness of those NGOs, how they are able to prevent gender-based violence. What I have seen is that we have so many organizations focused on that, but there is no impact.
9.) Is that the research that you are conducting back home?
Lebohang: Yes, with the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa for my PhD.
10.) What are your career plans?
Lebohang: Until I see women enjoying their lives, fully respected in communities and societies and given the acknowledgement they deserve, I will never rest. I think my career is about women’s activism, especially gender and health rights.
11.) How do you think your time in Pitt will help you get there?
Lebohang: This fellowship was just a blessing and it came at the right time. I am working on health issues, but I had not received enough training on health issues, only issues concerning HIV/AIDS and sexual education. I needed more skills in other health areas. Here, I am getting all that I need. I’m also taking classes in the School of Social Work in which I am learning about intimate partner violence. Together with classes from the School of Public Health, these classes are giving me the skills I need to help the women and girls of Lesotho. When I came here, everything fit so well, like it was designed specifically for me. For example, I did not have much knowledge about maternal and childcare, and that is exactly what I am learning about here. Already I see how I can integrate what I’m learning here into my work with the NGO. I plan on opening a center that will train women in these areas, develop their skills that will allow them to help more women and children. Through the center, women and girls will have access to a prenatal clinic, to education concerning sexual reproductive health, and to other services.
12.) How are you funding these programs?
Lebohang: I started writing proposals, but the challenge is that when a NGO is new, it does not have enough financial records to get funding. However I have formed alliances with other organizations back home that are already implementing their own programs. Together we are developing plans and implementing them to help me have my own records so that I can write proposals for funding. I’m still looking for funders who are willing to assist newly established NGO’s. But once I get funding, the sky is the limit.