Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, who recently accepted the Impact Award at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival, has been included in Time Magazine’s annual TIME 100. Please see the full press release below with more information.
TIME MAGAZINE NAMES SISTER ROSEMARY NYIRUMBE TO TIME 100, TIME’S ANNUAL LIST OF THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
(New York, April 24, 2014)—TIME Magazine named Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe to the 2014 TIME 100, its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The full list and related tributes appear in the May 5 issue of TIME, available on newsstands and tablets on Friday, April 25, and now at time.com/time100.
Sister Rosemary leads a vocational school in Gulu, Uganda, where she teaches practical skills to restore independence to women and girls who were kidnapped and sexually assaulted by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. She is the subject of the new book Sewing Hope as well as the documentary of the same name narrated by Forest Whitaker. Reggie Whitten, founder of non-profit Pros for Africa, and Nancy Henderson, wrote her story, which is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and on the Kindle and NOOK tablets. In the documentary, filmmaker Derek Watson brings to light first person accounts of the horrors of these attacks as actor Forest Whitaker narrates Nyirumbe’s fight to bring hope back to her troubled nation.
Under Nyirumbe’s leadership, St. Monica’s has adapted to the practical and trauma-induced needs of a population suffering in a civil war. Women and girls at the school receive psychological support and literacy training, as well as vocational skills like sewing and planting crops. Nyirumbe developed a program to help students earn money by creating purses from soda pop tabs. Since 2002, annual enrollment at St. Monica’s has surged to more than 300 from 31, and most leave the school with permanent jobs. Sister has touched the lives of thousands of children and for years she sheltered 300-500 children each night, keeping them safe from the LRA. These children were known as “night commuters,” as they left their families each night to seek shelter while Kony was terrorizing the country.
The list, now in its 11th year, recognizes the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals. As TIME has described the list in the past, “The TIME 100 is not a list of the most powerful people in the world, it’s not a list of the smartest people in the world, it’s a list of the most influential people in the world. They’re scientists, they’re thinkers, they’re philosophers, they’re leaders, they’re icons, they’re artists, they’re visionaries. People who are using their ideas, their visions, their actions to transform the world and have an effect on a multitude of people.”
The TIME 100 features often-surprising pairings of the influentials and the guest contributors TIME selects to write about them. Forest Whitaker wrote about Sister Rosemary in this year’s issue, http://time.com/70892/rosemary-nyirumbe-2014-time-100/.
Follow @TIME for updates about the list on Twitter and at Facebook.com/TIME.
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For more information about Sister Rosemary and the book and movie “Sewing Hope”, please visit www.sewinghope.com
