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Sagamore Institute is celebrating Black History Month by sponsoring a visit by 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee to Indiana.  Ms. Gbowee will discuss her fight against injustice that helped lead to the peaceful resolution of Liberia’s decades-long civil war and her recent appointment as head of Liberia’s National Peace and Reconciliation Initiative.

During Liberia’s long civil war, Gbowee helped organize and lead the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement, a coalition of Muslim and Christian women whose sustained peaceful protest played a major role in ending the war. Since the end of the war Gbowee has continued her work, serving as a commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Committee and as head of the recently established National Peace and Reconciliation Initiative. She has also expanded her work outside of Liberia as a founding member and former coordinator of Women in Peacebuilding/West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP), and as co-founder and executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-Africa).

Ms. Gbowee’s initiatives reflect the important role that individuals and private institutions play in economic, political, and social development. The president of Liberia, Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has established a Philanthropy Secretariat to facilitate these type of civil society initiatives so vital to the nation’s recovery; read Sagamore Senior Fellow Donald Cassell’s case study on the Philanthropy Secretariat here. Sagamore Institute has documented the surprisingly large number of connections between private organizations in Indiana and Africa, with a particular focus on links between Indiana and Liberia, which stretch back to at least the 1930s, and continue strongly to this day. In 2005 Sagamore Institute hosted then-Liberian presidential candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as she discussed economic development in Liberia, and in July 2011 Liberian Ambassador to the United States William V.S. Bull spoke at Sagamore about the role of the Liberian Diaspora in the country’s development.

Ms. Gbowee will be making public appearances at several institutions during her stay in Central Indiana:

Wednesday, February 15 

2:30 p.m. – University of Indianapolis (Indianapolis)

7:30 p.m. – DePauw University (Greencastle)

Thursday, February 16

2:30 p.m. –Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, International Center for Law and Human Rights (Indianapolis)

7:00 p.m. – Indiana Wesleyan University (Marion)