From The Program Director desk

Racheal Modupe Okegbola has more than twenty years cognate experience in development community projects and advocacy for women's rights and other marginalized groups in the society in order to create social and behavioral change. This experience dated back to 1987 when she worked for the National Directorate for Employment as Senior Evaluation Officer on development Programs, where efforts were concentrated to providing women, unemployed graduates and civil Society with the basic resources for empowerment. After the nine years of technical programming and implementation in the ministry, Ms Okegbola also worked as a coordinator of a women's program in a non-­profit NGO in Nigeria for two years before she joined the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID/CEDPA Project) from 1997 to 2009.

In CEDPA/USAID Nigeria, she rose from the position of Assistance Program Manager to Program Manager in 2002, and later to the position of Team Leader in 2005-6 and now a project advisor in USAID office in Nigeria. She has demonstrated ability to manage thirty (30) development projects successfully and to build NGOs’ capacity to create positive change on poverty alleviation, in the increase in women participation during elections, HIV/AIDS prevention as well as mitigating the impact of electoral violence among the society.

Part of my responsibilities includes proposal development, providing orientation and technical assistance to sub-projects partners, providing oversight functions in program implementation and Training NGOs and candidates for elections (on how to win elections in relation to the last three successive elections in Nigeria -1999, 2003 and 2007.) I have additional expertise in HIV prevention programs and Treatment advocacy as well as services for care and support. Ms Okegbola is an alumni of the Centre for Research and Documentation (CRD) Kano -Nigeria and CEDPA/USAID Washington USA. Her educational background is in history and political science.
Ms Okegbola has done extensive academic research in gender issues: These include her,

• Master of Philosophy thesis on Women in Public Administration, Nigeria 960-1991 (M.phil Political Science) 1998.
• Masters of Science, Management of Unemployment Crisis in Nigeria under the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) M.Sc Political Science). 1990.
• 1986 - Women and the Economy of Kabba Kogi Sate, Nigeria (B. A History) 1986.
• Gender and Electoral process in Nigeria going research for Ph.d.
• Conflict Mitigation among In –School Youth in Lagos State, (2004).
• Women and HIV/AIDS Stigma :Reducing Vulnerability and Impact Mitigation (2009).
• Talking together: Parents and their teens

Beyond this, she has a pet NGO tagged “Gender Training and Development Network” (GTDN) which has been implementing gender sensitive programs since founded in 2004. Part of which include:

• Periodic consultancy for European Union, Nigeria on gender budget for policy makers.
• Development of assessment tools for gender status in the Millennium Development Goal Program in the civil service, Nigeria.
• Periodic training during elections for women aspirants on how to contest and win elections.
• Research on women and electoral process.
• Networking with coalition of NGOs in Lagos state on domestication of CEDAW.
• Training of in-school and out-of school youths on governance issues and conflict mitigation.
• Research on HIV prevention, workplace discrimination and stigma of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).
• Sensitization of abstinence/HIV/AIDS for in school youths.
• Trained over 500 States /Local Government Councils’ policy makers on gender and gender budget mainstreaming in Osun, Yobe and Jigawa States,Nigeria.
• Established networks in 3 States (Lagos, Oyo and Kogi) for gender training and HIV awareness raising.
• Trained (through consultancy) over 250 women politicians on leadership skills, campaign strategies, zoning formula, electoral process, election monitoring, peace education/conflict mitigation transparency, accountability and government community relations.
• Packaged gender manual on conflict mitigation in school youths.

Racheal  Modupe  Okegbola