Zoneziwoh Mbondgulo-Wondieh is a Cameroonian feminist activist whose sights are set on advancing women’s rights. Her many titles include: award-winning humanitarian, storyteller, strategist, community mobiliser, campaigner, and opportunity-match-maker that connects women and girls to spaces, platforms, and networks that allow them to speak for themselves, claim their rights, and gain empowerment. 

Currently Mbondgulo-Wondieh serves as the founder and Executive Director for Women for a Change (Wfac), a feminist advocacy and research organisation in Cameroon. In this role, she travels to communities across the country to carry out sexuality education, host empowerment trainings, and further the research and campaigning of her organisation. 

In her own words, Mbondgulo-Wondieh shares how she connects women and girls to transformative opportunities that advance their gender and sexual and reproductive rights.

I had always been an unconscious activist…

… until my final years as an undergraduate in university where I gained my activist consciousness. This was in 2008, when out of curiosity, I decided to take a course on women, gender, and land rights. It was that course that triggered my consciousness and awareness on gender. I remember my first class like it was yesterday. I felt some sort of revival in my spirit, and since then there has been a quest for more knowledge. Inspired by what I learned in school, I volunteered for a couple of organisations locally and globally. Following which I founded the organisation Women for a Change in November 2009 — during 16 days of activism.

Because I did a bachelor’s in Environmental Sciences, I told myself it was important that I educate myself on gender. I then enrolled into multiple training programs.

All this training and classroom work — across six years at over four institutions — helped hone my gender analytical and theoretical skills in carrying out my feminist advocacy and research work. Thanks to this empowerment and under my leadership and initiative, Wfac is now an accredited observer with five UN agencies. It is also a member of the UN Women Major Groups, caucus and constituencies, leading advocacy actions across 11 central African countries and providing women leaders with the practical knowledge and skills needed in addressing gender-based violence through community resilience and feminist solidarity actions.

Read the full article about women and girls' leadership in Cameroon by Zoneziwoh Mbondgulo-Wondieh at Global Citizen.