Lindsay Goldner, Nov 28, 2020
For the most part, you seldom hear about a person who begins their advocacy work at the young age of nine, let alone founding a nonprofit by the time they become a teenager. 16-year-old Makanaka Chikowero isn’t most people. “My advocacy work actually started in about fourth grade,” Chikowero said. “We were assigned to do a Lego project and we had to pay close attention to how women and girls were portrayed differently than men and boys.” It wasn’t too long after that project where the Madison, Wisconsin resident, by way of Zimbabwe since the age of 2, was then brought to a conference in New York by the Rosario Memorial Trust. By the end of the conference, Chikowero’s discovery led her down the path she currently finds herself on. “I learned how women and girls here were not necessarily treated the same in rural communities in Zimbabwe [as they are in the States],” Chikowero said.