Leymah Gbowee MA [Major: Conflict Transformation]

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed Nation at War

Leymah Gbowee

Carol Mithers

Illustrated

Beast Books, 2011

0984295151, 9780984295159

256 pages

History Africa General
Summary: Leymah Gbowee is the winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. She is also the Newsweek and The Daily Beast's Africa columnist. As war ravaged Liberia, Leymah Gbowee realized it is women who bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts. She began organizing Christian and Muslim women to demonstrate together, founding Liberian Mass Action for Peace and launching protests and a sex strike. Gbowee's part in helping to oust Charles Taylor was featured in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Gbowee is a single mother of six, including one adopted daughter, and is based in Accra, Ghana, where she is the cofounder and executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network-Africa. Carol Mithers is a Los Angeles-based journalist and book author. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of national publications.

Africa's Peacemakers: Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent

Adekeye Adebajo

Zed Books, 2014

1780329431, 9781780329437

256 pages

History Africa General
Dr. Adekeye Adebajo has been Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, South Africa, since 2003. He previously served as Director of the Africa Programme of the New York-based International Peace Institute, when he was also an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He also served on United Nations missions in South Africa, Western Sahara, and Iraq. He obtained his doctorate from Oxford University in England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World

Alyse Nelson

Illustrated

John Wiley & Son's, 2012

1118184777, 9781118184776

272 pages

Business & Economic Management
Summary: How women around the world are leading powerful change.
Women's progress is global progress. Where there is an increase in women's university enrollment rates, women's earnings, and maternal health, and a reduction in violence against women, we see more prosperous communities, better educated, healthier families, and the preservation of equal human rights. Yet globally, women remain the most consistently under-utilized resource. Vital Voices calls for and makes possible transformative leadership around the world.
In Vital Voices, CEO Alyse Nelson shares the stories of remarkable, world-changing women, as well as the story of how Vital Voices was founded, crossing lines that typically divide. For 15 years, Vital Voices has brought together women who want to enable others to become change agents in their governments, advocates for social justice, and supporters of democracy. They equip women with management and business development skills to expand their enterprises and create jobs in their communities. Their voices, stories, and hard-earned lessons shared here for the first time are deeply authentic and truly vital.

• Features interviews and first-person accounts of global leaders, such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, and Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize-winning Burmese pro-democracy leader, as well as business leaders
• Draws on the work of the Vital Voices, the organization founded by Hillary Clinton in 1997 as a government initiative that transformed into a leading non-profit, which enables a network of 10,000 emerging women leaders in politics, human rights, and economic development in 127 countries. These women have gone on to mentor and train more than 500,000
• Focuses on the key elements of the Vital Voices five-step model of transformational leadership, including how to find a voice, lead with purpose, cross lines that divide, and more

Through the firsthand accounts of trail-blazing leaders, Vital Voices introduces unforgettable, inspiring women who are shaping our world.