Katies in Action Comfort Dondo’s “Big, Audacious Vision”

Katies in Action: Comfort Dondo’s “Big, Audacious Vision”

BY MARY PATTOCK ’66

A man brought an African woman to Minnesota. He married her, then abused her. To keep her silent and under his control, he tried to sabotage her efforts to obtain a green card, putting her at risk for deportation and losing her two children.

Comfort Dondo ’15 got her an attorney; the woman won her case and is now a citizen (1).

In suburban St. Paul, an abuser walked out on his African-born wife and their children. He took everything with him, leaving them not even beds to sleep on.

Dondo got them beds and bedding.

These are just two of the 1,200 women Dondo has helped through Phumulani, the nonprofit she founded in 2017 to help African-immigrant and refugee women of the Twin Cities, who have survived domestic and sexual abuse. Phumulani’s help is culturally specific: Dondo recruits volunteers who know a survivor’s language, culture, and religious values. They help survivors learn to talk about a subject so taboo they may not have words for it, and they help source legal, medical, and other community services. Dondo is currently looking to purchase a multi-family unit “where women can start over and get back their lives.”

Growing up in a small township in Zimbabwe, Dondo chose St. Catherine University because she was inspired by its mission to teach women to lead and influence. “I wanted to go somewhere I would be taught that as a woman. My culture did not provide that for girls.”

A childhood victim of sexual assault, Dondo found St. Kate’s to be “a home away from home,” and was particularly inspired by the support of social workers in its Access and Success student-parent program. Dondo says, “St. Kate’s is the place where I explored and discovered who I was without the other voices [from my past] telling me what I was supposed to be.”

St. Kate’s is the place where I explored and discovered who I was without the other voices [from my past] telling me what I was supposed to be.

After graduating with a degree in social work, Dondo worked for the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence for a couple of years. Frustrated by gaps she observed between policymakers and “social workers on the ground,” she decided to pursue her master’s in public policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute.

“I wanted to understand policy — how it’s made and how I can create change in the policy space.” She founded Phumulani as one of her master’s capstone projects.

Today, she is a candidate for a doctorate in leadership at St. Mary’s University in Minneapolis.

Dondo now shares her story to help others. “I’m not a survivor anymore. I’m a conqueror. When you are in the survivor space, you are still in survival mode. I found healing, and now I am healing others, so I say I am a conqueror.

“I survived childhood sexual assault, but I didn’t talk about it until I was 25, after a lot of trauma-induced behaviors [that included] going back into the cycle of abuse and marrying a man who was abusive to me. I think the healing part of my story is the most powerful,” she says.

“I don’t focus on what did not work in the past … but on what I did learn from that experience. I’m very much an optimist. If not, I would have given up a long time ago.”

Dondo wants Phumulani — which means “lover of peace” in Zulu — to grow. Now in its third year, it has an office in Minneapolis and is supported by the Bush Foundation, Women’s Foundation, HRK Foundation, and private donations.

In February, Dondo met with African First Ladies at the Timeless Women’s Conference in Rwanda, where she received invitations to speak in Malawi and Tanzania, and was chosen to lead the 2021 conference in Malawi. Phumulani currently has a presence in Uganda, and Dondo hopes to have the organization welcomed into more African countries. “That’s my big, audacious vision for this year,” she says.

1. Comfort Dondo ’15 is a member of the leadership cabinet for LEAD & INFLUENCE: The Campaign for the Next Level of Excellence.