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Aminata Conteh-Biger - Rising Heart

  • Muse East Hotel, 69 Canberra Ave Kingston ACT 2604 (map)

'The best and the worst of our shared humanity... breathtaking and heartbreaking.'

– The Hon. Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO

In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict.

It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months.

After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, still in her teens, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

It is here that she has proudly built a life, while never allowing her trauma to define her. Yet it was a near-death experience she suffered during the birth of her child that turned her attention to the women of Sierra Leone - where they are 200 times more likely to die while having a baby than in Australia.

So she set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, then returned to the land of her birth to help. This is her story.

Join Aminata Conteh-Biger in conversation with HerCanberra Associate Editor Emma McDonald.

Tickets: $10


Aminata Conteh-Biger is the Founder & CEO of the Aminata Maternal Foundation and an in-demand speaker.  A former refugee from Sierra Leone, she is the author of Rising Heart (Macmillan Australia) and a Special Representative for Australia UNHCR. In 2021, Aminata was the recipient of the Women’s Agenda Agenda Setter of the Year Award and she was invited to be a Keynote speaker at the momentous 2021 Women’s March 4 Justice in Canberra. She received the Humanitarian Award at the Celebration of African Australians NSW organisation and was awarded a full scholarship in the prestigious McKinsey Leadership Development Program. The Aminata Maternal Foundation is her life’s work, and she describes her ultimate purpose is to restore dignity to humanity. 

https://aminata.co/

Photo by Rodney Cavalier

Emma Macdonald has been writing about Canberra and its people for more than 20 years, winning numerous awards for her journalism - including a Walkley or two - along the way. Canberra born and bred, she’s fiercely loyal to the city, tribally inner-north, and relieved the rest of the country is finally recognising Canberra’s cool and creative credentials.

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