Dr. Uzo Anucha Asst. Professor, School of Social Work Gender equality aim of Nigerian social work project An adjunct professor in the University of Windsor’s School of Social Work will lead a team of researchers and academics to Nigeria over the next six years where they will launch a $1.6 million program designed to help impoverished women struggling against gender-based status differences. According to social work professor Uzo Anucha, gender inequalities increase the vulnerability of Nigerian women to poverty, disease and exploitation. These include reduced access to and control over property and financial assets, increased exposure to risk for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as sexual exploitation through human trafficking. The main focus of the project is to empower Nigerian women by strengthening social work education and practice at the University of Benin, which is located in southern Nigeria and has a student enrollment of about 36,000. The Nigerian program will focus on piloting a graduate program in social work, designing and delivering in-service professional training and upgrading for field supervisors, and lobbying for government regulation of social work practices. The University of Windsor is the host school for the project, titled \“Empowering Women by Building the Capacity of Social Work in Nigeria.\” Other team members include University of Windsor professors Kim Harper and Mary Medcalf in social work, Nombuso Dlamini in education and Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale in sociology, as well as faculty from the University of British Columbia, York University, and the University of Benin. "Social work, with its long tradition of empowering and working with marginalized people through multi-level interventions and collaborations with community-based organizations, is well positioned to contribute significantly to women empowerment and gender equality in Nigeria," says Dr. Anucha. "It is our hope that we will contribute to the progress that grassroots-level organizations have made, while establishing a new standard of social work education and practice that will benefit women, their families and their communities." The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian International Development Agency, has announced that it will contribute up to $1 million to the project. Source - In the News, University of Windsor.