People of 2008 Finalist: Patricia Smith Melton

November 27, 2008

Editor's Note: After two weeks of voting on the OneWorld.net site, Patricia Smith Melton received the third highest number of votes for the People of 2008 Award.

Patricia Smith Melton dedicates her life to giving women the chance to tell their stories of peace efforts abroad. © Peace X PeaceTo support and help spread her work to build peace and hope, consider purchasing Patricia Smith Melton's beautiful new book, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women. It makes a great gift, and each purchase is also a donation to support the nonprofit organization she founded, Peace X Peace.

Thanks to all who took part in the online dialogue with Patricia during the month of April. Patricia has responded to all your questions, explaining her motivations and the unique vision of humanity that has driven her global efforts.

Nominated by: Pat Morris, Peace X Peace

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (OneWorld) - Since the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, Patricia Smith Melton has devoted her life to voicing the unheard stories of women living, coping, and taking action to build peace in all corners of the globe. Her latest endeavor focuses on Israeli and Palestinian women.

Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women, is a book and interactive Web site featuring the lives of 30 Israeli and 30 Palestinian women, offering rare perspectives and insights into the women's personal desires for peace and the daily efforts they make to achieve it. The collection of biographies, interviews, and photographs introduces women from every walk of life that equally represent both sides of the conflict, resulting in a mosaic of 60 different lifetimes in one of the most war-torn regions of the world.

"A natural progression from Smith Melton's years of work in the peace process and her ability to gain the trust of women on both sides of a conflict, she created this project to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel," said Pat Morris, who nominated Melton for the People of 2008 award and is the executive director of the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Smith Melton founded, Peace X Peace.

Previous to Sixty Years, Sixty Voices, Smith Melton documented the peace building efforts of women in five continents in the award-winning film Peace by Peace: Women on the Frontlines. The inspiring stories she heard and documented were the motivation to build Peace X Peace, an Internet-based network inviting women everywhere -- regardless of nationality, race, or religion -- to communicate, form long-lasting relationships, and take action for peace.

"With new technologies like instant messaging, mobile Web pages, online translations, audio/video file sharing, and blogs, Peace X Peace is opening the world for women who only yesterday were confined by four walls," said Morris.

The Peace X Peace network is now six years old, and it continues to fulfill Smith Melton's original goal of connecting women worldwide for friendship, mutual support, and dialogue.

"We are citizens from many nations, from cultures with long rich histories and cultures with short wild histories. We have different religious and non-religious beliefs; our nations are governed by different political systems; we have different styles of personal interaction and communication," Smith Melton once wrote. "Yet we contribute, by our efforts to understand and honor each other, to the deep creativity that can keep our planet alive. We are interdependent, whether we recognize it or not."

* This story profiles one of ten finalists for OneWorld.net's People of 2008 award. Vote for your favorite, read more profiles, or tell us about other amazing people on OneWorld's People of 2008 page.

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THE OTHER FINALISTS

Aid Workers Killed in the Line of Duty © International Rescue CommitteeDozens of humanitarian aid workers were targeted and killed around the world this year. In some countries, particularly severe surges of violence have forced aid organizations to reconsider or suspend life-saving and community building operations. Patricia Smith Melton © Peace X PeaceSince the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, Patricia Smith Melton has devoted her life to voicing the unheard stories of women living, coping, and taking action to build peace in all corners of the globe. Her latest endeavor focuses on Israeli and Palestinian women. The Women of the Democratic Republic of Congo © cyclopsr (Flickr)Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been called "the worst in the world," and it has only gotten worse in recent months. But amid the daily threats to their life and communities, women are organizing to support each other and demand justice and protection. Francisco Soberón © Sena Tsikata / Institute for Policy StudiesFrancisco Soberón has worked to find justice for Peruvians for over 25 years, and the human rights group he founded has been instrumental in bringing former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to trial for alleged crimes against humanity. 1 Million Signatures Campaign for Women's Rights in Iran © Change for Equality CampaignAn independent grassroots movement of Iranian women and men is educating women about their fundamental human rights and steadily becoming a powerful force for women's equality in the patriarchal country.		Pamela Adoyo © Dago Dala Hera OrphanagePamela Adoyo stands calmly and resolutely at the epicenter of Kenya's AIDS epidemic. Her women's group is helping care for the sick, impede the disease's spread, and stitch back together a community torn apart by the epidemic. José María Prazeres Pós-de-Mina © Camara Municipal de MouraThe mayor of one of Portugal's smallest and poorest municipalities has launched one of the largest green business initiatives in the world, and now he's spearheading an eight-country project to create communities run entirely on renewable energy. Martin Fisher © Lemelson-MIT ProgramMartin Fisher is a businessman, an activist, a teacher, and many other things to many people. But first and foremost, he's an inventor -- one whose inventions have helped hundreds of thousands of people move themselves and their families out of poverty. Ashwin Naik © BiD Network FoundationAfter studying and working in the United States, Ashwin Naik has returned to his native India to launch a set of rural health care facilities that he hopes will help bridge the massive gap between the rich and poor in the rapidly developing country. Waseem Mahmood © Waseem Mahmood / Good Morning AfghanistanWith the signatures of over 62 million Pakistanis committed to the Yeh Hum Naheen Foundation's anti-terrorism campaign, founder Waseem Mahmood has become a leader in a movement promoting Islam as a peaceful, tolerant faith.