Sonoma’s WomenServe helps women, helping their communities – North Bay Business Journal

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CYNTHIA SWEENEY

NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL | June 23, 2017, 6:25PM

06/23/2017

From a young age, Nioma Narissa Sadler knew what she wanted to do with her life. What she didnt know was that her unusual upbringing, and challenging life experiences, would prepare her to do the work she does.

Sadler is the founder of WomenServe, a nonprofit based in Sonoma, that improves the lives of impoverished women and girls throughout the world, and subsequently their communities, by providing basic needs like water and health care.

In Rajasthan, India, women and girls walk up to 10 hours a day carrying water on their heads from a pond back to their communities. WomenServe, in collaboration with Traditional Medicinals, the wellness tea giant with products sold in more than 60,000 stores, has contributed to the construction of six large community ponds and more than 400 taankas (tanks to collect rainwater) providing water to 12,000 people.

With Sadlers guidance, five primary schools in rural India have been built, and female health workers have been trained to provide basic health services there.

WomenServe is about telling women and girls stories to create change and awareness, to draw in more interest and bring change towards equality, she said.

In addition to founding WomenServe, Sadler is the Goodwill Ambassador for Traditional Medicinals and is co-founder of the Traditional Medicinals Foundation. As ambassador, she travels the world working directly with farmers and producers to improve the quality of the herbs used in the companys tea. All three organizations work together in improving the communities that grow them.

The company works on the quality piece and the foundation works on the social piece, Sadler said. It is very unusual and is connected to the social business piece which is a big part of what TM is leading in which is to show the world how you can use capitalism to do good if youre intentional about it.

Sadler was born in Michigan, but grew up traveling the country. Her father was a college professor and a psychologist, however, My parents were gypsies. We spent a lot of time in California, Oregon, and Colorado. Theyre very esoteric people, studying the Earth as a living being. They were also isolationists. They didnt like to have the impact of outer world, TV, artificial things affect their children, she said. They wanted their children to just be affected by nature mostly.

As a result, Sadler was life-schooled. Every time the family drove by a school, her heart ached with longing for a traditional education.

I just remember driving by and feeling how much I wanted to be in that school. I had a deep longing for knowledge and learning as much as I could, she said.

Libraries were her saving grace. She checked out as many books at one time as she could, and read her brother and sisters books as well. Her obsession grew around stories and biographies of women and girls, and the common issues they face, like inequality, abuse, and not being allowed to receive an education.

One in particular was the biography of Meena Keshwar Kamal, a feminist crusader in Afghanistan, who was assassinated in 1987, and subsequently became a martyr.

I was very fascinated with her mission, and how, when she got murdered, her mission grew as all these other women and girls took it on, she said.