Cecilia Msafiri Kibada
Tanzania

Cecilia Kibada is a lawyer with over five years of experience in promoting and protecting women’s rights. She is the founder and director of Kibada Widows’ Voice, an organization that provides legal aid for widows in Tanzania. Most widows in her country find themselves economically and socially vulnerable and suffer from social stigmatization, eviction, and are often physically abused. In general, they cannot afford legal services, so Cecilia works to solve this injustice, and to educate the public on widows’ rights issues through the media, workshops, and publications. Her goal is to build a community free from humiliation and indignity for widows. Upon completion of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Cecilia will put the knowledge and experience gained into practice to stimulate change and find sustainable solutions to make violence against widows a thing of the past.