AWC Brings Save Our Sisters (FGC/M) Initiative to the PEGASUS Conference
At the 2026 PEGASUS Institute International Conference in Waterloo, Amani’s Executive Director made the case that justice in global health starts inside the community.
When Doris Mukangu stepped up to present at the University of Waterloo this spring, she carried one question with her: What does justice in global health actually look like? The answer she came to give was closer to home than most of the room expected.
Doris is the Founder and Executive Director of Amani Women Center. At the 2026 PEGASUS Institute International Conference, she presented Save Our Sisters: Community-Driven Strategies to Address Health Impacts of Female Genital Cutting — years of Amani’s research, relationships, and community trust, brought to an international stage.
What Save Our Sisters does
The Save Our Sisters (S.O.S.) Initiative grew out of CDC-funded research Doris led as part of the Women’s Health Needs Study. Its purpose is concrete and urgent: to secure critical medical care — including restorative surgery — for women living with the long-term health impacts of female genital cutting.
FGC affects millions of women worldwide. For a long time, the loudest responses came from outside the communities most affected, shaped by people who studied the issue from a distance. Amani took a different path.
A different way in: listen first
What sets S.O.S. apart is not only what it does. It’s how. Four principles guide everything, from how Amani enters a community to how it measures success: listen first, before planning or prescribing anything. Follow the leadership of survivors and community elders, whose insight no outside institution can replicate. Invest in the relationships and structures that already exist inside communities. And measure impact not by what gets delivered, but by what becomes possible.
These principles decide who is in the room, who leads the conversation, and whose knowledge counts as expertise. Community-driven, as Doris puts it, is a methodology, a discipline, and a daily practice.
The people who make it possible
A framework on paper helps no one without care behind it. Doris named the Harriet Tubman Women’s Clinic, which provides the medical care that walks alongside this work. She also thanked her colleagues across the U.S. End FGM/C Network Steering Committee, research partners at NORC at the University of Chicago, the CDC for funding the study, and the PEGASUS Institute and University of Waterloo for convening the work.
What justice looks like, up close
Justice in global health doesn’t arrive from a podium in Waterloo. It moves the other way — through a clinic door in the woman’s own neighborhood, through an elder trusted enough to be heard, through a survivor whose word shapes the plan instead of decorating it. As Doris told the room, the path to interconnected futures runs directly through the communities we are called to serve.
You can be part of that path. Amani’s hand-crafted button necklaces, made by refugee women, were created for the S.O.S. Initiative. One hundred percent of the proceeds support women living with FGC. They’re $25, take a look here: https://www.johariafrica.com/product-page/copy-of-fabric-button-necklace-07113-1
“Amani Women Center is a safe and supportive space where women of diverse backgrounds can find spiritual, mental, and physical healing — empowering them to build, thrive, and lead fulfilling lives.”
www.amaniwomencenter.org
AWC help line: 1 (800) 804-4918
