Capitol Hill Days

Melvine Ouyo, Population Connection Board Member, Founder and Executive Director of Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescents Initiative

Melvine Ouyo is the Founder and Executive Director of Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescents Initiative. She draws her experience working with the most vulnerable, marginalized, and hard to reach communities in Kenya as a reproductive health care provider and a reproductive health and rights advocate. Her focus is on global health and health policy reforms, women and girls’ empowerment, and community development.

Melvine joined the Population Connection Board of Directors in 2021 after working for many years as a #Fight4HER advocate for Population Connection Action Fund.

Dickson Okong’o, Executive Director of Stretchers Youth Organization

Dickson has seven years of experience in human rights advocacy and governance work. He is skilled in administration and leadership management and has a broad understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Kenya Vision 2030. Dickson is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Stretchers Youth Organization in Kenya. He believes in possibility through persistence and commitment and dedication in whatever he does and is strongly passionate about economic development among young people.

Cuthbert Maendaenda, Executive Director of Tanzania Men as Equal Partners in Development

Cuthbert has more than 25 years of experience in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) program management, including integration of male involvement in SRHR, adolescent SRHR, and advocacy. Other areas of expertise include project proposal writing and project measurement and evaluation. He’s worked on reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health projects under International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) of Tanzania, UNFPA, UK’s Department for International Development (now called the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office), and the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education, and he is currently consulting for Global Affairs Canada (GAC) as a local monitor for their supported maternal and newborn health projects.

Sara Lara, Founder and Executive Director of Women for Conservation

Sara Ines Lara, who proudly has Indigenous ancestry, grew up in a small village in the Andes of Colombia. In 2003, following her passion for nature and wildlife conservation, she became Executive Director of Fundación ProAves, a leading conservation organization in Colombia. Under her leadership, the organization established and managed 17 nature reserves to save endangered species. In 2004, Sara combined her love of nature with her drive to empower women and started the initiative Women for Conservation.

It is her life mission to protect the natural world so that we all may have the opportunity to heal through nature. Sara has been recognized as One in a Hundred Great Latin American Women by Billiken Magazine.

Congresswoman Susan Wild has been a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley community for more than 30 years. The daughter of a journalist and a career Air Force officer, she was born at Wiesbaden Air Force Base in West Germany and spent her childhood on Air Force bases across our country and around the world—an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to the families that serve and sacrifice alongside our servicemembers. After years of moving around, she finally found a place to call home when she settled in the Lehigh Valley to start her family. Susan built a successful legal practice in the Valley while raising her two children, Clay and Addie, and later became the first woman to be appointed Allentown’s City Solicitor. In November 2018, she made history again when she was elected as the first woman to represent Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Learn how to effectively meet with your senators and representatives with Population Connection staff.

Capitol Hill Days attendees will meet virtually with their Senate and House offices at various times throughout the day.