Leymah Gbowee, one of three women who shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, will speak at 7:30 p.m., February 16, at the Chapel Auditorium at Indiana Wesleyan University. The event will be open to the public, and there is no admissions charge.
Gbowee is a peace activist, trained social worker and women's rights advocate in Liberia. She will speak about the organization she co-founded in 2006, the Women Peace and Security Network Africa.
She also will share about the peace process in Liberia as well as her recent appointment by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to head the new peace and reconciliation initiative in Liberia. Sirleaf, who also shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, is the first female president of an African nation.
The third 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient was Tawakkol Karman from Yemen.
The Sagamore Institute, an Indianapolis-based public policy research organization, arranged Gbowee's visit to Indiana. She also will speak at other universities in Central Indiana.
The story of the Liberian women's struggle for peace is told in the award-winning documentary,Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which was released in 2008. The film focuses on Gbowee, whose efforts to mobilize Christian and Muslim women to nonviolently end the Liberian civil war have garnered international support.
Gbowee's memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War, was published in 2011.
Leymah received a master's degree in conflict transformation at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has six children.