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Beyond the Fellowship: How Four Weeks of Mentorship and Collaboration with Dr. Wendy Parent-Johnson has Created Lasting and Widespread Impact

Published: Aug 13, 2024

Country: Uganda

In 2022, when I was accepted into the Professional Fellows Program (PFP) on Inclusive Civic Engagement, I was excited about the opportunity, but I couldn’t have imagined just how much this experience would touch and inspire me.

I spent four weeks at the University of Arizona’s Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities, under the mentorship of Dr. Wendy Parent-Johnson, then the Center Director. During this time, I engaged with individuals with disabilities, learned best practices in inclusive employment and entrepreneurship, and participated in the Center’s initiatives. The experience was rich with lessons learned, making me more critical and reflective, and deepening my understanding of the diverse realities and contexts in which we work to promote disability inclusion around the world.

Initially, I thought my connection with Wendy would be brief and formal. However, I was deeply moved by her genuine investment in our work. Our relationship has since evolved into a truly inspiring mentor-mentee bond.

Winning a virtual outbound award — a multi-week engagement where the US mentor provides additional training, technical assistance, and mentorship— marked a great start to our post-Fellowship collaboration. Wendy, together with the Sonoran Center staff, shared valuable insights with me and my team at United Persons with Disabilities. This was a significant boost, especially given our ongoing need to adapt and tackle new challenges.

A profile picture of a Ugandan man wearing a suit and glasses is on the left and a white woman from the US on the right. Both are smiling. Between them is a Ugandan flag. A US flag and program logos line the bottom of the image.
Figure 1: Harunah (left) and Dr. Parent-Johnson (right) featured on a flyer as winners of the PFP outbound award.

The virtual outbound experience significantly enhanced our disability inclusion initiatives through the knowledge and skills gained from the training that Wendy and her staff provided. Following the outbound, we successfully registered our savings and credit cooperative organization (SACCO), which now has over 50 members, including people with disabilities and their caregivers. Many of my colleagues who attended the training were motivated to pursue self-employment, some secured jobs and advanced into professional roles, and others were accepted into prestigious fellowship programs. We have expressed our gratitude to Wendy and the staff at the Sonoran Center for their support, time, and resources. We kept them updated through our newsletter and social media as a way of showing our appreciation for their dedication and care.

Inspired by this support, we developed an idea for a program to further solidify and deepen our collaboration while empowering people with disabilities, their allies, and advocates with knowledge and resources for more effective grassroot efforts. We launched the Journeys to Inclusion series, a disability inclusion campaign where advocates and experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mentor, educate, and share effective strategies for disability advocacy and inclusion. In our Journeys to Inclusion series, we have hosted leading DEI experts who mentored our participants. Notable experts include Dr. Amanda Kraus, Associate Professor of Practice in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, Nicholas Love, Community Inclusion Director at the World Institute on Disability (WID), and Matias Ramos, Associate Director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

A profile picture of four individuals: a white woman with long brown hair, a white man who is bald and has long grey facial hair, wearing glasses, a Hispanic man with brown hair and a brown moustache, and a white woman with medium length light hair. The flyer banner reads: Journeys to Inclusion Disability advocacy campaign series for disability leaders in Uganda.
Figure 2: A flyer featuring, from left to right, Dr. Amanda Kraus, Associate Professor of Practice in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, Nicholas Love, Director of Community Inclusion at the World Institute on Disability (WID), Matias Ramos, Associate Director at Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, and Dr. Wendy Parent-Johnson, Executive Director of the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) and Professor in the Department of Counselling and Special Education at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and former Executive Director of the Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities at the University of Arizona, presenters who shared valuable lessons in our Journeys to Inclusion series.

In less than a year since launching the Journeys to Inclusion series, it has impacted over 300 individuals in Uganda, both directly and indirectly, creating a ripple effect of awareness, understanding, and action. Inspired by these efforts, Wendy and I wanted to scale our impact further by launching additional programs. For example, we envisioned a collaborative initiative with Fall 2022 PFP Fellow Priscilla Kisakye and her US mentor, Dr. Evan Borisinkoff, Associate Professor at Minot State University.

Evan, Wendy, Priscilla, and I explored a project to train mothers of children with disabilities and people with disabilities to become better advocates for themselves — an idea that promised to cut through bureaucracy and improve outcomes. However, we couldn’t pursue this idea due to funding limitations. We then considered the Wendy Parent Fellowship on Disability Employment to train disability leaders in best practices for inclusive employment and entrepreneurship, but we faced similar funding obstacles. Despite these setbacks, Wendy’s dedication and expertise, particularly in employment and policy change, continued to impress us. We proposed an online course that would combine all our recent learnings into a comprehensive, true cross-border project.

We envisioned the Employment-First Policy and Practice Course to analyze US Employment First principles and assess their relevance in various cultural and socio-economic contexts. Our aim was to show how people with disabilities can be employable and what support is needed. Many perceive people with disabilities as less capable, but this is due to a lack understanding. As Wendy states, "Our philosophy and my experience is that everybody can work. There isn't anyone who is not able to. Our focus is on creating opportunities for people to work… and that's how we view people's strengths."

We believe that acceptance and tolerance can be fostered through increased public education and awareness. While we may not change everyone’s mind, we can significantly impact how people understand and interact with individuals with disabilities. To ensure the success of this course, we collaborated with local Ugandan universities to provide the structure and expertise needed to adapt the course content to local contexts. We spent several months consulting with Ugandan university professors and senior lecturers, seeking their collaboration and recommendations, which led to the development of the Employment-First Policy and Practice Course we have today.

For years, I’ve been driven to make a positive impact in my community. Coordinating the Employment-First Policy and Practice Course and building strong university partnerships aligns deeply with my personal interests and experiences as someone with a disability. Being a person with a disability shapes my identity and how I’m perceived in the community. It’s important to me to challenge and transform negative perceptions about people with disabilities. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to lead this important initiative that will benefit many people, including myself.

To learn more about our Employment-First Policy and Practice Course, read blog post “VCU-RRTC Collaborates with Kyambogo University on New Course.”