Lynda Ziemba, an adjunct professor at Monmouth University’s Graduate School of Social Work and the Department of Political Science and Sociology, will receive the Outstanding Human Rights Community Activist award from the Human Rights Institute at Kean University on March 8 during the Institute’s annual conference.
Lynda was honored for her valuable contributions to increase awareness and advancement of human rights. She received a MSW from Monmouth University in 2008 and is a global community development social worker.
Lynda’s love of Africa began years ago as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) – twice she worked on home-building teams in local Ghana and Uganda communities. Lynda will once again join HFHI in January 2014 when she will lead a team of fourteen volunteers on another home-building adventure to Zambia.
Lynda’s background in Africa also includes working at the Liberian refugee settlement (Buduburam, Ghana) at St. Gregory’s Pre-natal Clinic as an HIV/AIDS screener and counselor. One of her personal goals was to support and promote the safety of pregnant refugee women and their unborn children. She has also worked in Liberia where she developed a Micro-credit project aimed at assisting women in the development of small market business. In 2009 and 2010, Lynda spent seven months in Tanzania with the triangular grouping-American International Health Alliance (AIHA), National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and the Tanzanian based Institute of Social Work.
Throughout 2012-2013 winter university semester break, Lynda worked in Makeni, Lusaka-Zambia at City of Hope (CoH), a Salesian Sisters/Don Bosco organization that affords a loving home for young girls in need of family support. CoH also provides primary and secondary educational resources to the local community. Lynda’s continued commitment to City of Hope includes developing proposals for an Adult Literacy Program, and a Micro-Credit project designed to assist thirty groups of female farmers in the Northern Zambian province of Luwingu.
Besides several African countries, in 2011 and 2012 Lynda’s global work took her to Bangladesh, where she spent time with the organization Development Wheel (DEW). DEW is a non-profit development organization that promotes several human rights based initiatives, many of which are directly aimed at combating domestic violence against women, exampled by their Changemaker program.