Based in Dakar, Senegal, the (UNOWA) was founded in 2001 to promote peace, security, good governance and humanitarian projects in West Africa.

Bombande’s recent appointment caps what has been a year of major transitions. In January 2015, he stepped away from the (WANEP) to allow a new generation of peacebuilders to take leadership of the organization. Bombande had worked with the organization since co-founding it in 1998. He was its executive director from 2004 until 2015, during which time WANEP and UNOWA were partners on various projects in the region.

Bombande was unavailable for comment. However, in a released issued by WANEP,  Executive Director Chukwuemeka Eze issued congratulations for Bombande’s “well-deserved appointment that further adds to the credibility of the WANEP family.”

Bombande is one of three graduates of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding recently named to prestigious appointments in Africa this fall.

, who earned a master’s degree in 2005, has been appointed Interim Deputy Special Advisor for National Security for Democratic Republic of Congo. He is president of the Center for Political and Strategic Studies. [An article is forthcoming.]

Gwendolyn Myers, who earned a graduate certificate in 2014 with the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program, has been named to a team that leads regional advocacy for the United Network of Young Peacebuilders.

Editor’s note: To learn more about Emmanuel Bombande, visit the 2015 issue of Peacebuilder magazine, in which two articles were published, one   (titled ‘I remember soldiers holding guns, forcing us to sing,’) and a in establishing WANEP and the West Africa Peacebuilding Institute.

UNYP, headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, has ties to 60 youth organizations in 45 countries. One of those youth organizations is , of which Myers is founder and executive director. In her organization, youth develop life skills through coaching, mentoring, advocacy and volunteering for peace and development (for information about MOP-Liberia’s accomplishments, click ).

Women’s leadership program built her skills

When reached for comment, Myers, who is currently residing in Washington D.C. as a fellow at the with the Institute for Global Engagement, called the appointment “inspiring, humbling and exciting.”

“The tasks ahead are daunting,” Myers said, “but with the team’s effort and the anticipated collaboration, we will overcome all obstacles along the way as we promote the Amman Declaration on Youth, Peace and Security and advocate for the active and meaningful involvement of youth on peace and security issues within our region.”

She praised the preparation she received through the WPLP program and at the as “great help with my advocacy for sustainable peace and development,” she said. “91¶ĚĘÓƵ has equipped me with the right tools to carry on this task.”

Myers was a member of the first WPLP cohort with three Liberian women and others from the South Pacific and Somalia. She earned a graduate certificate in peacebuilding leadership in 2014.

“We here at WPLP and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding are thrilled about Gwen’s appointment,” says WPLP director . “Her passion and energy are well-suited to this role and her past experiences speak to her ability to lead in this capacity. Gwen’s appointment is an excellent example of the leadership positions that women in WPLP are equipped to take on. We expect to see more graduates soon following in Gwen’s footsteps into positions of peacebuilding leadership.”

Several WPLP participants have gone on just as Myers has to have dramatic impacts in their countries and to be recognized for their peacebuilding efforts. This summer, , of Somalia, and , of Kenya, were awarded USAID’s prestigious .

With the support of two recent grants, WPLP is for a cohort of women from Kenya and Somalia, starting in May 2016. A second cohort of eight women from the Horn of Africa region will enter WPLP in May 2017.

Peacebuilding advocacy in Liberia

This summer and fall, Myers was instrumental in a nation-wide campaign in Liberia to publicize the Amman Youth Declaration. This document was drafted with input from 11,000 global youth at a conference in Amman, Jordan, in August 2015. It presents a “common vision and roadmap towards a strengthened policy framework to support [young people] in transforming conflict, preventing and countering violence and building sustainable peace,” according to the United Nations.

MOP-Liberia, led by Myers, celebrated International Peace Day with a week of activities in Monrovia, which included media engagement, interfaith interactions, community outreach into underprivileged communities, and a main event for the official launch of the Amman Declaration on Youth, Peace and Security in Liberia on the University of Liberia campus.

More than 500 youth representatives of national organizations joined the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Republic of Liberia to show support for the Amman Declaration on Youth, Peace and Security –“the first time that all Liberia rallied around any youth declaration unconditionally,” Myers wrote in a for the United Network of Young Peacebuilders.

Myers aided six peacebuilding youth from MOP-Liberia Inc together with the youth liaison adviser to the President of Liberia in introducing the document to the Liberian president; the two houses of Liberian legislature, the office of the chief justice, UN entities, the Carter Center, Action Aid and a number of local youth and civil society organizations.

These are the messages being spread by alumni of the of 91¶ĚĘÓƵ who are working in West African countries affected by Ebola.

“Local communities should not be seen simply as the source of problems or as victims,” writes Libby Hoffman in an published this month (January 2015). “Ebola is not just a medical problem – it is a community problem, and this dimension is being largely ignored within the current international response.”

Liberian peacebuilding alums Nathaniel Walker ( ’10) and Gwendolyn Myers ( ’14) offered similar sentiments in commentaries published in The Guardian and the Liberian Daily Observer, respectively.

“Communities that have taken Ebola prevention and control matters into their hands have recorded [a] significantly low number of cases,” wrote Myers in a . “Whereas, in communities that are yet to fully embrace the outbreak and to take action to avoid infection, we have seen an increase in transmission.”

Local efforts include developing the Pen-Pen Peace Network, an initiative of motorcycle taxi drivers. The Network has communicated about Ebola prevention through text messages, billboards, social media and loud speakers, distributed 3,000 fact sheets through communities, and built handwashing sanitation stations for citizens, wrote Walker and co-author Kai Kuang in an .

Women are playing important roles

In another grassroots initiative, Vaiba Flomo (CJP Grad. Cert. ’13) has rallied her close-knit Rock Hill community in Monrovia – where many of the 25,000 adults and children survive by hand-crushing rocks to sell for construction projects – to do health education. With her women’s team (called GSA Rock Hill Community Women), Flomo has distributed buckets, chlorine, and soap to various groups and centers where youths and adults typically gather, including clothing shops, prayer bands, video clubs, and drug stores. In an impoverished community largely ignored by governmental agencies, Flomo and her team have received .

Liberia is still recovering from a brutal civil war (as is Sierra Leone, one of the other West African countries hit hard by Ebola). For Walker and Myers, community-driven efforts toward Ebola prevention are vital not only to eradicate the disease, but to preserve the fragile peacebuilding steps that have been taken in recent years to heal these communities. (Guinea, the third West African country widely affected by Ebola, has suffered from political violence, but not outright civil war.)

In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, peace remains tenuous and distrust runs high (in many of these communities victims and perpetrators are living side-by-side), so fighting Ebola is intimately tied with communities’ ability to transcend past transgressions and develop open and honest communication.

“Lack of trust within communities is the unseen but powerful inhibiter of Ebola prevention and treatment initiatives,” writes Hoffman, whose charitable foundation, , is the main U.S. backer of , a Sierra Leonean peacebuilding initiative.

“Conversely, empowered and trusted local voices and leadership magnify the success of prevention efforts, and they do so while strengthening community capacity for post-Ebola recovery.”

Gaining strength to handle any crisis

Hoffman writes that building trust in communities actually provides a “social immunity” that goes beyond the disease at hand, and into the underlying fabric of society, leaving communities “stronger to face the next crisis, whatever it may be.”

Fambul Tok community members in Sierra Leone have been using their hard-earned trust to distribute soap to their communities, teach about prevention techniques, and develop the Bridging Communities Network, which functions much like the Pen-Pen Network in Liberia. [Hoffman attended 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) in 1996 and 2000; she has employed CJP graduates to work with Fambul Tok and sent Fambul Tok staffers to SPI sessions.]

As an example , who attended SPI ’14, heads a group called Peace Mothers under Fambul Tok. These mothers have been distributing soap and promoting handwashing in six mainly rural districts of Sierra Leone, seeking to reach about 250,000 households per district, often by going door to door.

“We believe that the outbreak will end when actors at all levels – the national and district governments, community-based organizations and the health sector – work cooperatively to engage local communities,” said a “project report” released Sept. 2, 2014, by the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, founded by Nobel Peace Laureate (MA ’07 in ).

The tide may be turning

This seems to be happening at last. The tide seems to be turning from Ebola in West Africa. On that weekly UN figures show a decline in new Ebola cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Even though the “death toll from the world’s worst Ebola outbreak has reached 8,429 with 21,296 cases so far,” schools in Guinea opened Jan. 19 after a five-month closure and the national daily infection rate in Sierra Leone is two-thirds lower now than it was in November. Liberia had its lowest weekly total since June and all three countries “have sufficient capacity to bury all the people known to have died from Ebola,” said the BBC.

In Sierra Leone, New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman has found that the locals are proving amazingly resilient.

“Vigor seems to be part of Sierra Leone’s national ethos,” he wrote in a on Sierra Leone’s passionate surfers, “especially now, when so many people are fixated on staying healthy. Freetown’s streets thicken at dawn with men and women decked out in the latest and brightest spandex — jogging, stretching, jumping rope, or doing situps and push-ups in the grass.”

If one visits , you’ll see that interspersed with updates on trainings in handwashing to stop the spread of Ebola, are fun photos of Myers in colorful clothing and high heels, sometimes with color-coordinated decorations around her neck and in her hair. It’s as if she’s saying, “We are not all gloom and doom here! We’re resilient Liberians and proud of it!”

at a to. The money raised will be distributed by the to two Liberian service organizations founded by alumnae of : GSA Rock Hill Community Women in Monrovia, founded by Vaiba Flomo, and Messengers of Peace, a youth outreach group founded by Gwendolyn Myers. To or for more information, click .

The first group of students in the included 12 women from Africa  (Liberia, Kenya, and regions in and around Somalia) and the South Pacific (Fiji and Solomon Islands) at the 2012 under .

After returning home, the participants will be provided with mentors and will take two additional classes in their respective home regions before earning a graduate certificate. An additional eight Somali women who did not receive visas to attend SPI this year are also enrolled in the program’s first cohort.

“I’m grateful, I’m overwhelmed to be a part of this,” said Gwendolyn Myers, a 21-year-old activist and journalist from Liberia who was selected for the program. “I want to bring this key message to the group: prioritize young people! Young people can contribute positively towards peace and development, if given the chance.”

She said her SPI classes taught her how to analyze and “map” conflicts and to bring all parties involved “to the table,” enabling her to act more strategically in Liberia in the future.

Myers is executive director of , a nonprofit organization that works with university students and youth to promote peace, reconciliation and a spirit of volunteerism in Liberia.

Hiba Mohamed Ismail, an instructor with the in Hargeisa, Somaliland, echoed Myers’ thoughts: “I was so lucky to be chosen.” She spoke of the benefits of being granted a safe, hospitable place to gain wider knowledge while reflecting on the social situation at home.

Ismail trains at-risk youth – many of them homeless, battling drug addictions or recently released from prison – in conflict management and vocational and social skills.

As a follow-up to SPI, experienced leaders in the peace field will act as mentors for each sub-group of women, helping them to integrate their academic training with their day-to-day work.

The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding received more than 100 applications for spots in the first cohort of the women’s leadership program and has already begun planning for future sessions. Working with its funding partners, and the German development organization, EED/, the peacebuilding center is expecting a larger group from the South Pacific next year, and it hopes to bring more Liberian and Somali women as well. Plans are also underway to add a new cohort of women leaders from Burma.

“The leadership of both women and men is vital to developing, implementing and sustaining robust peacebuilding processes at all levels of society,” said , director of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program. “More and more organizations and countries are realizing that the participation of women in leadership is vital to their well-being. This program is assisting countries and regions in developing the capacity of women to take up these leadership roles that are so needed.”

Three of the women in the program – Asli Ahmed Mohamoud, Amina Hassan, and Priscilla Singh – spoke appreciatively of having the support of their husbands for their peacebuilding work. In their home regions, it is almost unknown for a husband to care for the children in the family to enable a wife to play a public role, but their husbands have been exceptional. Mohamoud has three children, Hassan has five, and Singh has two.

Mohamoud, employed by , is the founder of a radio program called “Voice of Women,” which draws on the oral tradition of the Somali community to mobilize women to participate in their country’s peacebuilding process. She also writes a weekly newspaper column to encourage women.

Trained as a schoolteacher, Hassan founded Women for Peace and Development in Mandera, the northeast district of Kenya, in 1998. “Twenty or 25 years ago, you would hardly see a woman participate in activities beyond the family,” she said. “Some changes have been realized.” She said frequently recurring droughts – probably due to climate change – have forced some of the changes. Her people are seeing the end of the tradition of men supporting their families by owning herds of camels and other animals.

“Men are becoming idle and not knowing what to do or where to start over,” she said. Hassan’s group has doled out small loans – “we started with 100 women receiving 5,000 Kenyan shillings (about 60 U.S. dollars)” to empower women to start supporting their families through setting up market stalls and other small businesses.

For her efforts at reducing violent conflict and seeking other ways for her people to survive, Hassan has received the Head of State commendation in Kenya. She is planning to run for a seat in the nation’s parliament.

As the first woman to be elected to local government in her region of Fiji, Singh faced bullying and came to realize that women need to form a “critical mass” in government in order not to feel alone in the “lion’s den.” Singh is working to increase the role of women in the next national election and plans to run for a national office herself at some time in the future.

All of the participants in the Women’s Peace Leadership Program made the point that women and men must be respectful partners if there is to be lasting social change, for the betterment of all. “Promoting leadership for women is also promoting collaborative leadership for men,” said Jenner.

Though they were together at SPI for just a month, these first participants developed strong bonds and friendships, said 26-year-old Philma Zaku, a youth coordinator for the surrounding Honiara, Solomon Islands.

“You’re able to communicate with people who have the same passion … for making the world a better place,” said Zaku, whose job includes a significant focus on reducing and preventing domestic violence against women.

Zaku made a point of linking peace to other issues affecting the Pacific Islands, notably climate change and rising sea levels, which threatened the islands’ very existence.

, the executive director of 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, said he hopes the women’s leadership program marks the beginning of the participants working together over their entire lifetimes, sometimes in collaboration with 91¶ĚĘÓƵ.

Zaku agreed: “This first cohort of the women’s leadership program is just the beginning of something that must continue for the betterment of the world.”

Other members of the first Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program at SPI were: Amal Yasin Ibrahim, who works with the in Somaliland; Windor Dorko, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy in Liberia; Vaiba Flomo, featured in the documentary “” as one of the founding members of the Women’s Mass Action Campaign in 2003, which was instrumental in ending war in Liberia; Grace Jarsor, who was also one of the founding members of the Women’s Mass Action Campaign in Liberia, works for her government’s Ministry of Gender and Development; Jerolie Belabulie, a monitoring and evaluation officer employed by the in the Solomon Islands; and Alita Waqabaca, clinical practice leader for in Fiji.