[2] When her sabbatical year was over, Snyder decided to give up her position at Le Moyne in order to stay on in Africa, where, sponsored by the Women's Africa Committee, she would serve as an adviser to Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanganyika (UWT) and continue her work with various groups in Kenya and Tanganyika.

In 1965 she became assistant director for the Programme of Eastern African Studies of Syracuse University's Maxwell School, and was assigned as field director of their Ford Foundation assisted doctoral dissertation research on village settlements in Tanzania, with an opportunity to complete her own dissertation research there.

For example, it was the first to provide a large scale grant to the Green Belt Movement of Kenya, whose leader, Professor Wangari Maathai, would receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

[2][4][6] Once programs such as these were evaluated as effective, many were adopted or replicated by major funds including the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.

Two types of activities pioneered by UNIFEM for the whole UN system were direct support to national non-governmental organizations rather than solely to governments, and creation of revolving loan funds owned by community groups.

Initially administratively located in the Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs,[2][4] VFDW moved as UNIFEM to autonomous association with the UNDP in 1985.

The other major obstacle arose when some politicians successfully sought the withdrawal of the US government's annual contributions to its core resources (but not to those of its Middle East project partner, UNICEF).

She wrote the histories of the African Training and Research Centre for Women at UNECA (with co-author Mary Tadesse) and of UNIFEM.

She then received a Fulbright award to allow her to spend the 1994–95 academic year teaching at the newly established Women's Studies Programme for MA candidates at Makerere University in Uganda.