Turning a Lens to Women’s Issues: A Talk with Nioma Sadler, Founder of WomenServe and Co-Founder of Traditional Medicinals Foundation

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Nioma Narissa Sadler

In pursuit of self-discovery, Nioma Narissa Sadler has spent her adult life on the path of service. As the Goodwill Ambassador for Traditional Medicinals, the co-founder of the Traditional Medicinals Foundation, and Founder of WomenServe she has traveled the world leveraging her passionate expertise for developing community empowerment strategies with women’s cooperatives in Guatemala, advocating for improved women’s agricultural working conditions in Kazakhstan, and fearlessly defending women’s fair wages in war torn Bosnia.

Currently, Nioma has inspired the trust and gratitude of 12,000 villagers living in the severe drought conditions of the Thar Desert on the border of India and Pakistan.  Under her management, the Revive Project has constructed six large community ponds and 500+ rainwater catchment systems, providing water security to a region that depended upon women and girls to walk ten miles a day in the heat to collect water for their families.

With her guidance five primary schools in rural India have been built (1,200 children attending including 500 girls), women teachers hired (for the first time in this region), and hundreds of bike scholarships provided allowing girls to ride the long distances to schools. Additionally, Nioma has initiated dozens of health/hygiene trainings in rural India and trained fifteen female Village Health Workers who provide basic health services to communities with no other access to care.

While serving on the board of the Lunafest Film Festival (films for, by and about women), Nioma raised $250,000 in funding for the Sloan House Women’s Shelter and the Breast Cancer Fund. Tireless in her mission to tell stories about women, Nioma has directed and co-produced 4 films about women’s education and the connection between women and water.

 

Event Timeslots (1)

Inspiration Hall – Indoors
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