Mozambique Fulbrighter

Inocencio Zandamela

“I believe I am the first deaf person from Mozambique to go to South Africa and earn an undergraduate degree, come to the United States and come home with a graduate degree,” says Inocencio Zandamela, Fulbright Student, teacher, advocate, father of four and recipient of a master’s in educational psychology from Saint Rose.

A high-profile student, Zandamela attended the after-school Help Yourself Academy and led sign language chats on campus, bridging the hearing and non-hearing worlds in ways that were not possible back home in Mozambique. Growing up there deaf, he stood little chance of gaining a decent education, let alone a meaningful career. So he left, to study at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Zandamela’s goal, then as now: transform deaf education at home. It’s a drive that brought him to Saint Rose on a Fulbright grant to earn his master’s in December.”

-by Jane Gottlieb, The College of Saint Rose

Fulbright Fellowship
Mozambique