Nanda Pok                        

Founder and Executive Director
Women for Prosperity (WFP), Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Nanda Pok is the founder and Executive Director of Women for Prosperity, a non-governmental organization based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  A refugee who fled to the United States just before Pol Pot took control of the country, Ms. Pok returned to Cambodia in 1992, determined to be part of the reconstruction and development of her country.  She publishes a bimonthly magazine to promote the concept of women in leadership and has trained over 5,000 women to hold political office.  In the most recent elections, 613 of the 953 women elected were trained by her organization.

Ms. Pok’s peace-building activities include:

• organizing the UNIFEM-sponsored Peace for Prosperity, a program that promoted nonviolence, voter education, and the participation of women in government through work with politicians, voters, and the media;
• acting as an official monitor during the general election in 1998;
  
• organizing roundtable discussions that promoted dialogue to prevent conflict in local elections;
• chairing the Coordinating Committee for the Commune Council Election, which trained and placed observers at every polling station during the February 2002 election and provided voter education to the general public;
• lobbying various branches of government for democratic reforms in election law as a member of the board of directors for the Coalition for a Free and Fair Election;
• organizing a committee to ban landmines in the country;
• organizing protest marches with other human rights groups to gain the attention of the nation’s policymakers; and
• conducting training sessions in leadership, politics, legal rights, and democracy at the grassroots level to help the women of Cambodia attain the skills they need to be an effective part of the political machine and amplify their calls for peace.