lizabethtown College welcomed Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Laureate, as the keynote speaker for the 2013 Ware Lecture on Peacemaking. The lecture was held April 17 at the Leffler Chapel and Performance Center at the College. Dr. April Kelly-Woessner, associate professor and department chair of political science, held a discussion following Gbowee’s lecture. The lecture was free and open to the public, and was sponsored by the College’s Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking.
Gbowee is now the executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, which is based in Accra, Ghana. This program builds relationships across the West African sub-region to prevent, avoid and end conflicts involving women. She is a founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Program/West African Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP). She also served as the commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Gbowee is a peace activist responsible for helping bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003.
The efforts of herself and her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf helped bring a period of peace and enable a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won. This made Liberia the first nation in Africa to have a female president. Gbowee also helped organize the Liberian Mass Action for Peace in 2003, an alliance of both Christian and Muslim women. The group rallied together in protests which included confronting Liberia’s ruthless leaders. In 2011, Gbowee was named the Nobel Peace Laureate and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman. Gbowee has emerged as an international leader who changed history. In 2012, the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa was established in her honor. Along with those awards and distinctions, she has also been granted various other peace awards for courageous commitment and the Blue Ribbon for Peace award among others.
“Mighty Be Our Powers” is Gbowee’s full story in her own words. It informs audiences of up-to-date knowledge about Gbowee’s now multinational efforts to empower women and help bring peace to their home countries. The book is a very personal response to adversity including despair, hope and exhaustion. It deals with the hard choices between family and work and the decisions that have to be made as an admired leader of a civilian protest.
