Our History
MOPGEL work is driven by our co-founder Hisenburg Q. Togba who had worked as a photojournalist in the Liberian Media for three years. During his travel around the country, he saw the grief-stricken conditions of women, girls, children and those with challenges.
Reflecting on his late mother being one of the victims of traditional practices that forced young girls into early marriage, and her urge to him to get involved with a sustainable advocacy that will transform traditional practices, he decision to start a column in the New Democrat Newspaper styled, “The Eye for the News”, to propagate the situation of women and girls as well as those living in extreme poverty. His goal was to create awareness so that humanitarians or people of goodwill could come in to help the vulnerable escape the poverty path.
In March 2000, Hisenburg’s Eye for the News vision was transformed into the establishment of Movement for the Promotion of Gender Equality in Liberia (MOPGEL). September 2000, Hisenburg and colleagues from the New Democrat Newspaper, where he published the column “Eye for the News” fled into exile in Accra, Ghana due to persecution. While in Accra, he and his colleagues received a Human Rights Award of ($2000) two thousand dollars each from the Human Rights Watch, an award giving to writers whose writing led them into trouble. In order to continue his human rights work on the broader level, Hisenburg dedicated his award to the work of MOPGEL and started projects within the Buduburam Refugees camp hosting Liberian refugees who fled the 1990 civil crisis.
In Accra, Ghana, MOPGEL expanded its projects when Dr. Marshall Conley President Conley-International based in Canada joined the Movement as a volunteer fundraiser in 2004. As a volunteer fundraiser, Dr. Conley had provided over $60,000 sixty thousand United States dollars in cash and equipment.
In the United States, Hisenburg met Ms. Sarah Nicole Jenkins; a nurse practitioner who encouraged the registration of MOPGEL in the USA. Sarah previously volunteered in Accra Ghana during the operation of MOPGEL in Ghana.