A Walk at Midnight

Join the Global Women's Leadership Network and Collaborate for Africa for a discussion with Catherine Wanjohi, founder and executive director of Life Bloom Services International and author of "A Walk at Midnight: Journeying With Abused Women and Girls Towards Inner Dignity and Wholeness."

After ten years as a teacher and secondary school administrator in Naivasha, Kenya, Catherine Wanjohi left her job to dedicate her life to freeing vulnerable women and adolescent girls from the traps set by poverty, culture and sex trafficking. In 2003, Catherine founded Life Bloom Services International (http://www.lifebloom.org), a non-profit organization whose goal is to offer emotional support, life skills, vocational training and new hope for commercial sex workers, abused girls and women, and poor single-mother households.

Catherine will speak about her work empowering women to help them leave the sex trade, regain self-respect, remain healthy and keep their daughters from falling into the same traps. She has committed to building a school, the first of its kind in Africa, where women can get education and training to move forward in their lives. Eventually, she hopes to dramatically expand beyond the 2,500 clients served today by establishing four new "one-stop" centers in Kenya.

Catherine will be interviewed by Maame Yelbert-Obeng, who spent five years with the Global Fund for Women as Program Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa and is now Africa Program Director at the Women's Earth Alliance.