Dickinson to Host Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, One of Time's 100 Most Influential People
Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe
Gender-Based Violence and Women’s Education
by Xenia Makosky '24
Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” will deliver a lecture at Dickinson addressing the effects of gender-based violence and how to find hope amid trauma and pain. The event, “Gender-Based Violence and Women’s Education,” will take place Wednesday, Jan. 31, at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter (ATS) Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will be livestreamed and will be available via a link at the Clarke Forum website.
Nyirumbe has served the victims of a violent civil war that decimated northern Uganda and South Sudan for the past 30 years. For decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, committed mass atrocities against civilians, most notably abducting and killing tens of thousands of villagers and kidnapping youth for use as sex slaves and child soldiers. Since 2002, Nyirumbe has enrolled more than 3,000 girls at St. Monica’s Girls Tailoring Center in Gulu, Uganda, where she helps them regain dignity, independence and hope through job training in tailoring and catering. Nyirumbe will discuss a technique called “Learn and Earn” that she uses to help students overcome trauma suffered during the civil war.
Nyirumbe has fought to bring hope and dignity back to her nation. She has received the United Nations’ Impact Award, a CNN Hero Award and has been honored by the Women of the World Summit conferences in New York, San Francisco, Switzerland and London. Nyirumbe is also featured as the subject of the book and film Sewing Hope.
This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Dickinson Catholic Campus Ministry (a Student Senate-sponsored club); Saint Patrick Church; the Office of the President; the Center for Civic Learning & Action; the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity; the Center for Spirituality & Social Justice; and the departments of Africana studies, history, religion and educational studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty series.
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Published January 24, 2024