{"id":34816,"date":"2017-09-11T11:14:46","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=34816"},"modified":"2017-09-12T10:44:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T14:44:30","slug":"alumna-year-2011-leymah-gbowee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2017\/alumna-year-2011-leymah-gbowee\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna of the Year 2011: Leymah Gbowee"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 7, 2011 Leymah was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> for her work mobilizing women to prayerfully protest and end the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003.<\/p>\n

But well before that honor, someone clicking onto the Wikipedia entry for Leymah Gbowee<\/a> on June 28, 2011, would have found these opening sentences:<\/p>\n

\u201cLeymah Roberta Gbowee is an African peace activist responsible for organizing a peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president.\u201d Need more be said about why Leymah was chosen as EMU\u2019s Alumna of the Year<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

But there is more, as Jan Jenner<\/a>, director of the Practice & Training Institute of EMU\u2019s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding<\/a>(CJP<\/span>), recounted in nominating Leymah for this latest honor: During the war in Liberia, Leymah became the director of the Woman in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET<\/span>). Calling for mass action for peace, women sat in front of the State House and other key places in Liberia\u2019s capital, Monrovia, for weeks, eventually forcing a meeting with then-president Charles Taylor, urging him to stop the war.<\/p>\n

Mr. Taylor did agree to attend peace talks in Ghana. Leymah and many other women followed Taylor to Ghana, constituting a group of Liberian women who applied pressure on the warring factions to arrive at peace terms.<\/p>\n

Leymah is currently heading the Women, Peace and Security Network Africa, a women\u2019s organization in Ghana that builds relationships across the West African sub-region in support of women\u2019s capacity to prevent, avert and end conflicts.<\/p>\n

Leymah\u2019s work is an incredible example of what civilians can do to influence the political and military systems during war. Leymah credits EMU<\/span>\/CJP<\/span> with giving her the ability to understand and articulate her work, and many more skills for continued peacebuilding across Africa.<\/p>\n

Leymah earned a diploma in social work at a Liberian university. In 2007, she completed her MA in conflict transformation at EMU<\/span>. The mother of six, Leymah has been a leader in the Lutheran
\nChurch of Liberia and, while studying at EMU<\/span>, was active in Muhlenberg Lutheran Church in Harrisonburg. Leymah\u2019s eldest son, Joshua \u201cNuku\u201d Mensah, entered EMU<\/span> as a freshman in the fall of 2010.<\/p>\n

Peacebuilding honors<\/h3>\n

Leymah has received multiple honors, including:<\/p>\n