Fighting The Natural Resource Curse: Women Activists On The Front Lines [Oxfam, The Evans School & Uw Center For Human Rights]

Please join us on Monday, March 2nd in Thomson Hall room 101 to celebrate International Women’s Day by hearing personal stories of resilience and social change with two amazing women activists. Please join Oxfam America, Seattle Oxfam Actions Corps, UW Center for Human Rights, Jackson School's Master of Applied International Studies, and the UW Evans School of Public Policy in welcoming these dedicated community activists. This is an excellent opportunity to interact with women leaders who are on the front lines of the battle for fair and equitable land rights. You will have the opportunity to learn firsthand how these women have fought to prevent their community's valuable resources from leaving their nation. Refreshments will be provided, and there will be opportunities to take action following the program. *Co-Sponsors Welcome!* Panelist Biographies: Hannah Owusu‐Koranteng‐ Deputy Executive Director, Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM)‐ Ghana Hannah is an Agriculturist / Environmentalist with a Diploma in Horticulture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi and an M.A. in Environmental Management and Policy from the University of Cape Coast. Hannah held the position as technical officer and Subject Matter Specialist on Women Farmers for 18 years with the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Following her time at the Ministry, she worked with the General Agricultural Workers’ Union as a Project Coordinator of the Rural Workers’ Program. As a worker of the trades union, she served as a member of the ILO Task Force on Informal Workers and was a part of the drafting Committee on Informal Economy and Decent work at the 90th ILO meeting in Geneva. Hannah is a founding Member of Wacam, a mining advocacy NGO in Ghana. She has been working on transparency issues in Ghana since 2003 and was nominated to represent civil society organizations on the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Secretariat in 2010 (Biography courtesy of Oxfam America). **Update** Unfortunately, Joanna Manu will be unable to attend. Instead, we will host speaker and activist Nadine Kone. Nadine Kone is a national of Burkina Faso with significant experience in West Africa region mainly in Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina, and Ghana. Nadine has been trained at the University of Ouagadougou as specialist in Rural Development. She subsequently obtained a postgraduate degree in Sociology of Politics from the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar-Senegal. Nadine started her career in 2003 with Senegal 7 Ferlo, Aquadev Louga (a Belgium NGO) as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer before joining Open Society Initiative for West Africa, Dakar office in 2007 as Economic Governance Program Associate, where she did significant work in extractives industries and human rights, and contributed a lot in organizing West African CSOs into coalitions and networks working on transparency in the management of mineral resources. Since February 2012, Nadine has been working with Oxfam as Regional Extractive Industries Program Officer, based in Ghana, and then as the Regional EI Policy coordinator based in the Dakar Regional Office. She is responsible for overseeing OXFAM’s work on Extractives in West Africa, working with Oxfam’s newly organized knowledge hub, as well as coordinating regional policy work with regional bodies like ECOWAS and WAEMU. If there are any questions, please contact Oxfam Action Corps Seattle Co-Lead, Ben Wiselogle at benwiselogle@outlook.com or 206.949.8635