Amina Shaaban | Dar es Salaam, Tanzania


Amina is an emerging leader in the provision of inclusive education in Tanzania. As a Social and Economic Strengthening Advisor at Pact, Amina directed the Sauti project, an initiative supported by USAID and Johns Hopkins University that combats HIV in Tanzania. Amina also has extensive expertise implementing inclusive education initiatives while she was a Program Manager for Save the Children and BRAC, the world’s largest NGO. She oversees grant proposal writing and project design and helps develop and implement strategies to promote inclusive education in local schools. Her responsibilities to the NGO also include budget planning and allocation, fundraising and reporting on progress to donors. Amina also exerts considerable influence over education projects across Tanzania as she supervises 180 youth clubs and 30 pre-primary schools in four different regions.

Prior to the ADA International Fellowship, Amina was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a prestigious initiative launched by President Obama to bolster young leadership in Africa. She was placed at the University of Delaware for the duration of her Fellowship. Before joining Save the Children, she worked for BRAC and Africa Amini Alama and Redington Gulf and provided volunteer support to the Legal and Human Rights Center.

Amina has used the ADA International Fellowship Program to learn new ways to raise awareness about disability among families and communities in Tanzania. She has also strengthened early identification within pre-primary school classroom settings so that children with disabilities get an equal chance in education. For her project, she has worked with the Tanzanian government to implement early identification procedures in a targeted subset of schools that she oversaw through her work with BRAC. In 2019, she was chosen for the prestigious Chevening Scholarship, the U.K. government’s international awards program aimed at developing global leaders.

Amina pursed her ADA International Fellowship training with the University of Massachusetts Boston Early Childhood Program.

To read Amina’s project progress report click here.