For the past four years, Counterpart International—through the USAID/Timor-Leste NGO Advocacy for Good Governance Activity—has worked closely with the Community Based Rehabilitation Network Timor-Leste (CBRNTL), a Timorese NGO dedicated to improving the quality of life for persons with disabilities and other vulnerable people. Carmelita Araujo, a CBRNTL program manager, has attended a number of the Activity’s capacity strengthening trainings, enhancing her skills around advocacy, research, leadership, financial management, communications, and more. But her journey of empowerment as a woman in Timor-Leste’s highly patriarchal society began long before her work with the Counterpart.
Araujo—the only daughter in her family of four children—had always wanted to find a career that would allow her to use her love of science and math to help others. In 2017, she accomplished that goal, earning a degree from the National University of Timor-Leste in Engineering and Informatics. After graduation, Araujo put her degree to work, serving as a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders for three months, building her skills mobilizing youth and disseminating information to encourage more young people—and women in particular—to become engineers. Using her background in computer science, she used social media and other tools to conduct outreach across Timor-Leste. When her volunteer role ended, Araujo felt inspired to continue finding ways to attract more women to the science and technology fields that she was so passionate about.
She began supporting local women’s groups and learned more about the challenges they faced. Women lacked access to education, and persons with disabilities had even fewer opportunities. Eager to get more involved and find a way to support this community, Araujo came across a unique CBRNTL program, Naroman for the Future. The program, managed by a group of engineering volunteers, uses recycled paper and plastic bottles to create materials to build homes for persons with disabilities. Impressed by this innovative program, she volunteered to work with them, again using her background to conduct outreach and get women with disabilities more involved with this important work. Over the course of a year and a half, Araujo mobilized 120 youth to join CBRNTL’s network and recruited teachers to conduct language training in both Portuguese and English. Most of the young participants were people with disabilities who hadn’t previously had the opportunity to study the languages that would allow them to secure more job opportunities in today’s increasingly global market.
Carmelita Araujo (front left) leading a group of supporters in a march through Dili, Timor-Leste, in honor of the 2024 Day for People with Disabilities. The march advocates for increased rights for people with disabilities throughout Timor-Leste.
CBRNTL was so impressed with Araujo’s initiative and effort that they offered her a job as a program manager, supporting its work with groups for victims of violence against women and girls with disabilities. She built trust with the women, gaining a better understanding of their needs and how CBRNTL could help improve their lives. In one community, for example, she helped create a women’s group to learn skills in agriculture to earn income. In Ermera, a largely rural municipality in central-western Timor-Leste, she helps support women’s groups to plant vegetables and raise fish to sell at the local market and bring home for their families to eat. Each group has 15 members comprised of persons with disabilities or family members of people with disabilities.
Carmelita Araujo and Fernando de Andrade Nunes at a CBRNTL-supported agriculture project in Metinaru, Timor-Leste. Araujo is helping Nunes’ self-help group to cultivate mushrooms and sell them to local markets, in order to support their group, made up of people with disabilities and their friends and family.
Eager to continue advancing in her career, Araujo regularly attends Activity leadership trainings, applying the lessons learned to her daily work at CBRNTL. She credits the trainings with helping her to gain confidence and be seen as a leader and an expert in coaching and mentoring women’s groups and self-help groups. Araujo has learned the value of delegating work and giving the community groups the space to learn, make mistakes, and better support their growing community of persons with disabilities in Timor-Leste.
