In From Africa
Mary F. Hayden, who spent 15 years earlier in her career as a researcher at the Institute on Community Integration, recently visited ICI’s offices on a trip back to the United States from Kenya. There, she’s conducting evaluations in the human rights field.
Her passion for disability rights dates back to 1970, when, as a high school student, she volunteered at a Brainerd, Minnesota, intermediate care facility for children and adults with developmental disabilities. Appalled at the conditions in the facility, where people with disabilities languished without proper therapies, exercise, and other necessities, she had to step out briefly on her first day.
“I left for a few minutes because I thought I was going to faint, but then I went back in and completed my two-week volunteer commitment,” she said.
Stirred by the experience, she went on to the University of Minnesota, where she earned a degree in social work/child development. She then completed dual master’s and doctoral degrees in social work and behavioral disabilities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before returning to the University of Minnesota in 1988.
While at ICI, Hayden worked as a researcher and then as a senior researcher on projects that included a 10-year longitudinal study on deinstitutionalization.
After leaving ICI in 2004, she set her sights on international work, consulting on various humanitarian and development projects with international non-governmental and United Nations agencies.
“Although I had been in academia for 15 years, I had to prove I could work in the field and that I had something to contribute,” she said. “A lot of people assumed someone from academia wouldn’t have experience on the ground.”
Her first project involved conducting a household survey to expand a child protection program in Sierra Leone. She met with tribal leaders to explain what the work was trying to accomplish and to earn their trust.
“Mary is exceptionally good with relationship building,” said Connie Burkhart, an ICI staff member who worked on several projects with Hayden at ICI. “Those skills served her well as she continued her international career.”
Today, Hayden is heartened by the trend in disability research to incorporate participants with disabilities themselves in all aspects of inquiry.
“Their participation is the only way to ensure that researchers are conducting research that will bring about improvements in our social and economic institutions and structural changes in our social systems,” she said. “The strongest force in changing social and economic institutions and social systems will always be people with disabilities, so we all need to listen to them and follow their lead.”