Tendai and former Ireland
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern

World Aids Day
Tendai Madondo is Christian Aid Ireland's HIV/Aids specialist in Dublin. She regularly travels overseas to visit Christian Aid projects funded by Irish Aid. The above photo is of Tendai with Bertie at the 2007 ‘Stamp Out Stigma’ event in Dublin. Tendai is a passionate speaker on the subjects of HIV and Gender Based Violence, and also on her home country of Zimbabwe.

Community Projects in Ireland :

Tendai’s family arrived in Ireland in 2002 after her husband got a civil engineering job in Dublin. Being a spouse of a migrant worker she was not entitled to employment neither where her Zimbabwean qualifications were transferable. As a result she resorted to volunteering work in order to familiarise herself with the local environment and to upskill herself. She has learnt from a very early age that :

" If life gives you rocks, it is up to you to build a bridge or a wall. ”
Tendai and Rev. Ian Paisley

She did volunteering work at Clover Hill Prison supporting families of prisoners, and HIV support work. She quickly realised that she had to attain the local qualifications, so she enrolled and studied for an MBA.

She then joined the board of Dublin AIDS alliance, AKIDWA and through her current work she sits on various steering committees including

1. The Gender Based Violence Consortium
2. The National Stamp out stigma campaign as a vice chair person
3. The national Action Plan on FGM steering committee
4. Dochas HIV working group and Africa Centre and
5. The Global Campaign for Microbicides.

There is no substitute to participation if integration has to be effective. Ed Foreman summed it up when he said

" You can never tell what type of impact you make in one another’s life by your actions or lack of action, sometimes just with a smile on the street to a passing stranger can make a difference we could never imagine."