Name:  Isatu Kajue Nee Sesay

Country of Origin:   Sierra Leone

NLS Award: 2003-2004

Graduate Program:  Professional Master's for Development (PMD)-Gender and Agriculture, Larenstein University, The Netherlands

Goal:   Focus on women's roles in agriculture for approaches to promoting women's programs, accessing resources, and mobilizing communities to lobby and influence government on gender-related issues.

Current Projects: Isatu Sesay is currently working as a National Consultant on HIV and AIDS for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).  Her key responsibility is to work on HIV and AIDS policy in Sierra Leone specifically focusing on strategies to promote and further develop the UN CARE and the “Caring for Us” programs and policies. She previously worked with the Institutional Reform and Capacity Building Project (IRCBP) as the Gender Specialist at the Decentralization Secretariat on Gender. In that position she supported local councils in ensuring gender sensitive and responsive development programming for local communities. Her primary responsibility included ensuring that quality, meaningful leadership by rural women in the local councils is enhanced.

Previously, Sesay worked with UNIFEM in Sierra Leone, coordinating the production and submission of the first national CEDAW report since the treaty was ratified in Sierra Leone in 1988. She also coordinated and supervised the effective implementation of CEDAW in Sierra Leone in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs. In her position, she worked closely with the Family Support Unit of the police on issues of VAW, and with legislators -- both District and National -- on non-discriminatory legislative reforms, to address women's and girl's human rights. Previously she worked with ActionAid International in Sierra Leone as Gender and HIV/AIDS Coordinator and worked with the Africa Regional HIV/AIDS Coordinator (Izeduwa) on a capacity needs assessment for HIV Positive Living Women, a study commissioned by UNIFEM-Sierra Leone. She has planned and implemented gender, women's rights, and HIV/AIDS programs using CEDAW, the MDGs, the Beijing Platform for Action and other international instruments.

Sesay gives technical support in the forms of advice, coaching, training and mentoring on gender planning, the development of gender and women's rights related proposals, gender manuals, budgeting for gender and women's rights initiatives, women's rights advocacy strategies and effective mobilization around the advancement of women's rights. She also directs trainings on participatory tools such as Participatory Rapid Appraisals, Stepping Stones and Reflect (STAR), Gender Analysis tools, and Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDP) at all levels.

Sesay maintains sound relationships with policy and decision makers on the advancement of women's rights. Influencing the government's committment through the coordination of a taskforce on a campaign for the education of the girl child seems to be one of the current areas of success for Sierra Leone. Please see ActionAid's Sierra Leone website for more information.

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