Leymah Gbowee Biography
Leymah Gbowee trained as a trauma counselor during the civil war in Liberia and worked with the ex-child soldiers of Charles Taylor's army. The more she worked with them the more she came to see that they too were were victims. She joined the Woman in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) and quickly rose to leadership thanks to her leadership and organizing skills. She brought women of the Christian Churches together to issue a series of calls for peace and soon formed a coalition with the women in the Muslim organizations in Monrovia, resulting in the Liberian Mass Action for Peace. Under Gbowee’s leadership the group managed to force a meeting with Charles Taylor and extract a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana. She then led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process. Gbowee is the central character of the award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which tells the story of the women’s peace movement in Liberia.
In 2007 Gbowee was awarded the Blue Ribbon for Peace (2007) by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and, with the women of Liberia, received the Profiles in Courage Award (2009) from the Kennedy Library Foundation. Gbowee is the executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, a women’s peace-building organization in Ghana, that will act to build relationships across the West African sub-region in support of women’s capacity to prevent, avert, and end conflicts. She holds a master’s degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Links:
Interview on Bill Moyers Journal
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06192009/watch.html
JFK Profiles in Courage award
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education+and+Public+Programs/Profile+in+Courage+Award/Award+Recipients/Leymah+Gbowee+and+the+Women+of+Liberia/
Interview on Colbert Nation
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/233532/july-14-2009/leymah-gbowee