OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Nominated by: Sarah from IDEX

Text messages. Strangers approaching in rural gas stations. Betty Makoni is bombarded by requests for help 24 hours a day.

Today Betty Makoni is a well-known -- and tireless -- children's rights advocate in one of the worst places in the world to be a child: Zimbabwe. But 30 years ago she was a vulnerable child herself. At the age of six Makoni was raped -- one of ten young girls violated by a local shop owner. With little family or community support, she committed herself to working -- to earning money for school fees -- and to studying.

By the age of 24 she became a teacher and saw that things were still no better for the girls she worked with. So she started a club -- a place where girls could talk about their problems, support each other, and begin to take back their rights. It was popular -- immensely popular, and it quickly spread to many schools and towns. The Girl Child Network was soon formed, and today the non-profit organization supports 500 girls’ clubs with 30,000 members all over Zimbabwe.

"Unless we start challenging the systems that are currently in existence and come up with an activist, development organization that supports and helps young girls to develop, there is going to be continuous gender imbalance in our society." Makoni's Girl Child Network has even helped create "safe villages," where girl victims of abuse, child labor, forced marriage, and rape live together in security.

Over the past year, Makoni was elected to the Ashoka fellowship, highlighted in the book Women Who Light the Dark, and featured in the documentary "Tapestries of Hope."

In March, over 5 million children at 20,000 schools worldwide voted to award Makoni this year's prestigious World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child.

But in August, she found herself in political trouble in her politically troubled country. Working with a U.S. filmmaker to tell the stories of young girls abused in Zimbabwe, she was arrested and intimidated by authorities and held in a Harare jail. Even after her release, she was required to return to the police station for interrogations day after day after day -- forcing her to miss trips and interrupting her vital work on behalf of the country's vulnerable girls.

Four years ago Makoni was attacked in her home by masked men who broke her door down with an axe. One of them said: "You’re the woman that causes nothing but trouble for us," before they were scared off by Makoni's husband.

But despite the threats to her life and despite her country's political upheaval and its disastrous economic circumstances, Betty Makoni does not relent in her struggle for girls' empowerment. "Unless we start challenging the systems that are currently in existence and come up with an activist, development organization that supports and helps young girls to develop, there is going to be continuous gender imbalance in our society," she told a San Francisco audience in 2003.

Her work continues.

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