Staff Spotlight: Clementina Adam Mwambene

Clementina Adam Mwambene

Meet Clementina Adam Mwambene, SEGA’s Program Coordinator for its Modern Girl Community Outreach program, also called Msichana wa Kisasa.

Balancing the importance of academics in preparing girls to improve their quality of life, SEGA has an outstanding Education for Life (EFL) program on its boarding school campus which teaches girls skills in the areas of leadership, entrepreneurship and preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexual diseases.

Curricular elements of SEGA’s EFL program are delivered to at-risk girls and young women across five regions of Tanzania through SEGA’s impactful Modern Girl program. Modern Girl trains recent SEGA school grads to work as mentors, and, as the one-year program has grown, graduates of Modern Girl itself return as mentors to empower the next generation of girls. Mentors teach life skills, sexual reproductive health, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy to girls and young women ages 10-25 in their home villages. The program now reaches 1,500 girls in 26 community centers and is continuously expanding.

Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Clementina received her BA degree at Truman State University in Missouri, USA. Not stopping with a BA, she recently earned a Master’s in Business Administration at the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania.

Clementina with two Modern Girl mentors in the Morogoro community near SEGA

She joined SEGA in June 2016 and has helped the Modern Girl program expand substantially during the past six years. She says, “I think the platform that SEGA provides in championing girls’ education and empowerment, whether in school or in the community where I work, is amazing. Through SEGA I have seen girls (mentees) and mentors become young women of substance.”

One of the challenges that Clementina encounters is the hesitancy with which some communities receive the Modern Girl program. This is because in many areas of Tanzania, girls have a lower status and value in society compared to boys. However, once enrolled in the Modern Girl program, they receive guidance on maintaining proper hygiene, HIV prevention, family planning, drug/alcohol abuse, small business and product development, and money management.

States Clementina, “SEGA is a beautiful community that focuses on educating and empowering girls to reach their maximum potential through various programs both on campus and out of campus. We love our supporters and we always welcome them at SEGA.”