GLOBAL NETWORK CIRCLE STORY

Left to right: Mary Cordes,Aldioumawoye Cisse, and Shirley Tomczac meet at the Women's Global Initiative Forum

In 2004 Patricia Smith Melton and other staff members came to Detroit to show the documentary Peace by Peace: Women on the Frontlines and introduce Peace X Peace. Two of Mary Cordes' friends were there and told her, "We have to see this video together." Inspired, they formed a Circle, registered into the Global Network, and were matched with a Circle of young women in Mali.

Technical problems made the experience frustrating at first, but everything changed in 2006. Mary and Shirley Tomczak, who speaks fluent French, came to Washington to take part in the Women's Global Initiative Forum, meet their Circle sister Aldioumawoye, and take her back to visit Michigan. Mary describes her as a courageous, charming, intelligent young woman who aspires to enter the Foreign Service. "The earth shook," she recalls. "We learned that we really are all sisters."

Mary and the other Circle members are professional women who consider themselves well-informed, concerned about what's happening around the world, and active in working for change. But spending a week with this Malian college student brought the world up close in a way they could not have imagined. She visited in five different homes, captivating families and extended families. Circle sisters took her to Lake Michigan, to a mosque, to a farm with horses, and to the African American Museum in Detroit, and made her the star of a community forum with lots of Peace X Peace materials.

Now Circle members are exploring how to set up a microcredit project for young women in Mali, building on considerable research and working with an intermediary they trust. And they are spinning off new Circles. They are planning joint meetings with a church-based Circle in a nearby town and joining the group's Women in Black vigils. They're developing friendships with members of a mosque that will soon yield another Circle. And because of Mary's own passionate political involvement, Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan, has declared a statewide Peace X Peace Day and looks forward to watching Women on the Frontlines.