Betty Makoni, CEO and Founder
Betty Makoni is a gender rights activist and advocate. She founded the Girl Child Network Zimbabwe (www.gcn.org.zw) in 1998 and served as its executive director over a decade. GCN is a community-based organization that champions the rights of girls and trains them to learn and defend their rights. During her tenure (which officially ends in August 2009), she established hundreds of girls’ clubs across the country, touched the lives of 300,000 girls and built four empowerment villages to heal and support survivors of sexual abuse. Drawing on her own experience as a child rape survivor, Betty developed a unique girl child empowerment strategy, the first its kind to target the holistic individual transformation of girls as well as the transformation of society to support girls in their recovery, education and advancement.
Betty has shared the empowerment model in Ethiopia, Swaziland, Malawi and South Africa, among other places. She is a passionate international speaker and advocate on issues affecting the girl child. She also serves on several boards of nonprofit organizations in Africa and the US. Betty has a BA in English, Shona, Linguistics, University of Zimbabwe and a BA Fourth Year with Special Honors in Theatre Arts and Development, University of Zimbabwe.
Betty Makoni is currently a candidate, along with Graca Machel and Nelson Mandela for the 1999-2009 Children’s Decade Heroes Award. More than 22 million children are voting in 30,000 schools around the world.
Selected Awards Received
- Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award, 2009, USA
- Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award, 2008, USA
- Ashoka Fellow, 2007, USA
- World Children’s Prize, 2007
- Zimbabwe Institute of Management National Contribution Award, 2007
- Selected one of the Outstanding Young Persons of the World by the Junior Chamber International, 2007
- The United Nations Red Ribbon Award for addressing gender inequalities that fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic, 2006
- Creativity in Rural Life Award by the Women’s World Summit Foundation, 2003, Switzerland
- Certificate of Honor by Global Philanthropy Forum, 2002, USA
For further background, click here: http://www.ungei.org/infobycountry/zimbabwe_1419.html
Leanne A. Grossman, Trustee
Leanne A. Grossman is a writer, human rights activist and international affairs advisor. She has travelled to Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to spread the word about women’s inspiring achievements in advancing women’s and girls’ rights in the areas of trafficking, violence, economic empowerment, environmental justice and life under occupation. She serves on the boards of Crude Accountability (www.crudeaccountability.org) and Global Greengrants Fund (www.greengrants.org). Leanne is a sponsor and volunteer of the Chicana/Latina Foundation (www.chicanalatina.org). Leanne was the director of communications at the Global Fund for Women until 2008. Prior to that, she worked at ISAR with environmental NGOs in the post-Soviet states, and was a founding member of the NIS-US Women's Consortium. She has an MA in international policy, Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Margaret Howell, MBE
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