“When you lift up women, you lift up humanity,” says Melinda Gates—a belief that has inspired the LIFT (Let’s Improve Futures Together) Initiative’s goal to expand access to women’s health and empowerment education in Kalongo, Uganda. Through the Powerful Means Initiative’s ongoing partnership with Saint Bakhita Vocational Training Center (SBVTC), a girls-only boarding school in northern Uganda focused on equipping young women with vocational and entrepreneurial skills, the LIFT Initiative has worked toward this goal through the creation of a comprehensive women’s health and empowerment curriculum.
The LIFT Initiative began at the beginning of the fall 2024 semester when students Jilly Petrillo (‘26) and Veronica Walkin (‘27) partnered with Innovation for Impact club advisors Renee Maslak (‘24) and Melissa Mendoza. Through the Innovation for Impact club, students contribute to the Powerful Means Initiative by designing practical, real-world solutions that create meaningful change, while club advisors provide mentorship and guidance to support these projects.
The motivation for LIFT’s approach to the creation of a women’s health and empowerment program lies in the lack of access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education in rural Uganda (Rutakumwa and Krogman 2007). This education gap not only has consequences on girls’ physical and emotional well-being, but also has long-term implications for their futures; in Uganda, 23% of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 drop out of school once they begin menstruating (Mourice Muhoozi 2025).
Addressing these challenges through accessible health education and support services is not only essential for improving girls’ well-being but also for empowering them to stay in school and pursue opportunities. This empowerment is especially critical at SBVTC, where girls are also being taught to become entrepreneurs, equipping them with the confidence, knowledge, and agency to shape their futures.
To address these challenges, the LIFT team set out with three primary aims:
Conduct ethnographic research to evaluate the existing knowledge of women’s health and empowerment in the area.
Design a curriculum centered around women’s health and empowerment, tailored to the specific needs and prior understanding of the women in the area.
Develop an implementation plan for delivering the curriculum at SBVTC.
The team began tackling the first goal during the fall of 2024, where they spent the semester working with St. Bakhita fellow Vicky Kyozaire to survey the students about their knowledge of key women’s health and empowerment topics and determine the most important areas to cover. The team learned more about the specific challenges faced by women in the region and the lack of existing women’s health education programs. The next step was to engage directly with local women to understand their perspectives, challenges, and needs.
During Professor Wendy Angst’s Innovation and Design Thinking Immersion trip in January 2025, members of the LIFT team set out to gather feedback directly from St. Bakhita students and the community to ensure it would meet their unique needs and address the specific challenges they face. Led by Veronica, the goal of this trip was to prototype and refine part of the curriculum, focusing on key empowerment topics such as self-love, positive self-image, confidence, and self-efficacy. One essential refinement was the addition of a unit that covers gender-based violence and advocacy, addressing one of the major challenges faced by women in the region. According to the National Survey on Violence in Uganda, 95% of Ugandan women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and improving access to information can empower women to recognize abuse and seek help (Nakayiza 2024).
Prototyping and refining continued during the immersion trip in March 2025, spearheaded by Jilly and Renee. The immersion team focused primarily on key women’s health topics, testing materials covering areas like female anatomy, reproduction, and personal health and care. In addition, they distributed 150 menstrual cups to the Innovation Scholars and began collaborating with tailors to develop a plan for creating reusable pads from leftover fabrics.
Testing and enhancing the curriculum alongside the Innovation Scholars and community members during immersion trips has allowed the LIFT team to co-create solutions rooted in the needs of the community. This iterative and collaborative design thinking process ensures the curriculum is not only effective but also shaped by the women it intends to support. The Head of School at SBVTC, Victoria Nyanjura, and fellow Vicky Kyozaire have been invaluable partners to the team, helping connect Notre Dame students with community members and translating the women’s health and empowerment workshops.
The team is now focused on finalizing the 38-week curriculum, which covers 14 total topics, and working toward its implementation. The spring break immersion team piloted the first four weeks of the curriculum and completed the first unit: self-realization and awareness. When the curriculum is finalized this summer, it will pick up after this unit and be taught in full to this year’s cohort of innovation scholars, continuing to be taught to each cohort for years to come. The LIFT team looks forward to continued partnership with SBVTC and the broader Kalongo community as they work together to support women in meaningful and lasting ways.
Citations
Rutakumwa, William, and Naomi Krogman. 2007. “Women’s Health in Rural Uganda: Problems, Coping Strategies, and Recommendations for Change.” The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research = Revue Canadienne de Recherche En Sciences Infirmieres 39 (3): 105–25. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17970462/.
Mourice Muhoozi. 2025. “64% of Ugandan Girls Miss School due to Lack of Menstrual Support, Audit Reveals.” Watchdog Uganda. January 24, 2025. https://www.watchdoguganda.com/news/20250124/177245/64-of-ugandan-girls-miss-school-due-to-lack-of-menstrual-support-audit-reveals.html.
Nakayiza, Caroline. 2024. “AD792: Gender-Based Violence Ranks as Top Women’s-Rights Issue That Ugandans Want Government and Society to Address.” Www.afrobarometer.org. April 4, 2024. https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/ad792-gender-based-violence-ranks-as-top-womens-rights-issue-that-ugandans-want-government-and-society-to-address/.
Veronica Walkin is an undergraduate student (class of 2027) in the Mendoza College of Business studying Marketing and Design (Visual Communications).