Wish your summer internship consisted of less filing and copying, and more life-altering, groundbreaking work? I got a chance to catch up with senior Julia Gallagher, who was lucky enough to experience the latter. She spent her summer as a development intern at Mama Maji, a local to New Orleans non-profit whose mission is to empower women to change their world through water. She is running a fundraising campaign in the month of August to finish a water project in Kenya (you can donate here) and sat down with me to discuss the organization, as well as her fundraising efforts:
Tell us a little bit about yourself!
Hi! My name is Julia Gallagher and I am from Philadelphia, PA. I am a senior (ahh!) and I study International Development and Spanish. The School of Liberal Arts added a Management minor so I am squeezing that in before I graduate as well. My main hobby is talking about and showing people pictures of my five-year-old sister Bella. Besides that, I’ve recently taken up a more frequent yoga practice and I spend time curating and checking off my list of New Orleans restaurants and bars I still need to try.
What led you to intern at Mama Maji?
I became intensely interested in the cause of clean water for all people after living in Peru for the semester and learning about non-profits fighting for the cause through select readings. As I was exploring options of internships for the summer in New Orleans, their organization stuck out to me as unique among the many non-profits in this city. Clean access to water is such a universal need, and the organization believes that women are the change makers in the realm of water and ensuring clean access to it in developing communities. This women-focused nature of Mama Maji attracted me to it.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the organization?
They are a small non-profit, based out of New Orleans, and also work in Kenya because of a fellowship experience of one of the founders. I like to say that Mama Maji is just as much about clean water as it is about women’s empowerment. Mama Maji takes the burden of collecting water and turns it into an opportunity by equipping women with skills to run the installed water kiosk as a sustainable business. During the process of building a water project, Mama Maji works with local partners to host community health trainings. Finally, because Mama Maji believes empowerment can happen wherever women are, they also host trainings for women in New Orleans which cover topics such as grassroots marketing, financial management, and public speaking.
Tell us about your fundraiser, and where the efforts are going. What makes it so important for people to donate, and why is it important to you?
This fundraiser is called Where Women Are. The $4,000 raised from my campaign will go to the completion of a water kiosk in Kamrongo, Kenya. This means the community can vend water from the kiosk that pipes water in from a well in a neighboring village. The money will also fund community health training so that everyone understands the connection of health and clean water so that they are more motivated to utilize the kiosk. This campaign has caused me to reflect on all the time the women in Kamrongo will gain when they no longer have to walk a distance for water. I think about how valuable the time is that I spend with influential women in my life and how without their attention I would not be who I am today. I want to be a part of giving women the time to fully be the empowering people they already are.
What are your favorite initiatives that they have done?
My favorite initiative is the sustainable business training. It is one thing to place a water project in a community and it is an entirely different thing to create a sustainable women-led business that simultaneously allows for clean water within a community. In developing countries women are almost always the ones in charge of collecting water for the family, and when trained with new skills, these women are likely to maintain these business techniques. This allows them to earn money, as well as supply safe water, to the community.
What are your hopes for the organization in the future?
This organization is making positive change community by community in Kenya so far. But my hope is that the work has a greater effect and is able to change the mindset of many so that in communities, both here and abroad, we are constantly working to allow women to have the same opportunities as men. Whether the collection of clean water is the barrier, or something else, I hope that Mama Maji is able to influence expectations of what happens where women are.
As posted above, you can donate to Julia’s fundraising efforts by visiting her page here.
To discover more about Mama Maji, please visit: https://mamamaji.wordpress.com/.