Betty Makoni
Betty Makoni (BA Gen, BA Special Hons) is CNN Hero 2009 for Protecting the Powerless, where she was honoured by Nicole Kidman. She has 28 global awards for innovation, commitment and passion for her work to protect over 300,000 girls in Zimbabwe. United Nations Red Ribbon award honoured Betty Makoni and Girl Child Network as having the most innovative strategy for gender equality. Betty Makoni is an Ashoka Fellow and singled out as one of the investors in poor and marginalised women and girls deserving of this life honour as a fellow. News Week named Betty as one of the 150 women who shake the world, alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. An Honorary Decade Child Rights Hero award (2011) that Betty Makoni received alongside President Nelson Mandela, who won the award, also shows the impact Betty Makoni has made globally.
Betty Makoni has inspired millions around the world to replicate the Girl Child Empowerment Model that she developed. Besides her work with Girl Child Network Worldwide and building many Girl Child Networks in Africa and throughout the world, Betty Makoni is a mentor, coach, and trainer for women and girls who want to do similar work.
Betty has a lifetime of volunteerism and service to many causes and has served on Oxfam Novib and UNAIDS Round Tables. She sits on many boards of high profile organisations like RESTORED UK and serves as Ambassador and Patron of Africa Achievers Award and Zimbabwe Achievers Awards.
She is a published author of a poetry book, A woman, Once a Girl: Breaking Silence, which was recently launched in London.
Betty is featured in best-selling books including Women Who Light the Dark by Paola Gianturco, On The Up by Nikki and Rob Wilson, as well as main subject in the award winning documentary, Tapestries of Hope, by U.S. Independent Presidential Hopeful for 2012, Michealene Risley. The Girl Child Network Empowerment Model which she started in 1998 has been singled out as Best Practice and included in University of Essex Journal for Human Rights 2010.
Due to the high demand for Betty Makoni to speak, mentor and coach girls and women round the world , she has responded by setting up a social enterprise Muzvare Betty Makoni Empowerment Initiative in UK (www.muzvarebettymakoniei.co.uk) where she offers consultancy services to organisations, schools, churches and families challenged in any way about girls . Many people book Betty Makoni as a motivational speaker and this enables her to offer a service whilst at the same fundraising for her work in Zimbabwe and some parts of Africa.
If at any stage you want Betty Makoni to come speak, mentor or coach girls or women or if you want some of her team members she personally trained to come do this , don’t hesitate to email her direct on [email protected]
“That there is a silent genocide of women and girls in the homes, communities and just everywhere is not a new story. That my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister, cousin, niece, housemaid, co-worker, friend, neighbor and just about every female shares the same pain is not a new story. What is new in this story is how I stood up to say, “Never again.” Never again will a girl or woman get raped, killed, drop out of school, be harmed by our culture or be sexually enslaved. That is as long as I know about it. Never Again--not to any woman or girl again is the new story.”