ST. THOMAS - More than 100 people gathered at Reichhold Center on Thursday afternoon for the Women's Rights Prize and Symposium in recognition of the winners of the 2009 Gruber Foundation Women's Rights Prize, advocacy group the Women's Legal Centre of South Africa and activist Leymah Gbowee of Liberia.

Now in its 16th year, this is the first time the Gruber Foundation - which is headquartered on St. Thomas - has presented the Women's Rights Prize, or any of the five prizes it awards annually, in the territory.

"The prizes are awarded to contemporary individuals or groups whose groundbreaking work provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture," said Patricia Gruber, the foundation's president.

The symposium opened with remarks by Gruber and the introduction of Leymah Gbowee and Toboho Molebatsi, who is a trustee of the Women's Legal Centre of South Africa, as well as moderators and Gruber Advisory Board members professor Sakiko Fukuda-Parr of The New School, in New York, and professor Thandabantu Nhlapo of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Molebatsi spoke on behalf of the Women's Legal Centre, the nonprofit law center based in South Africa that continues the struggle toward achieving equality for women. She said the WLC was founded in 1998 to help advocate for the country's citizens as covered under the law of their new constitution. Currently, she said, South Africa and Brazil are tied for having the largest disparity between the rich and the poor and half the population live below poverty level, the worst being rural households that are headed by a female. South Africa also has the highest statistics of rapes and child rapes in the world, both because of socioeconomic factors and because it is still widely believed there that intercourse with virgins cures HIV and AIDS.

She said the organization helps advocate for women, especially those who are impoverished, in the key areas of gaining them freedom from domestic violence, providing access to resources in marriage and partnerships, access to land through inheritance, fair legal practices and access to health care. The WLC does this through litigation, providing free legal advice, supporting advocacy campaigns, and the training to explain the impact of court decisions on women's rights. "The Women's Legal Center has a vision of women in South Africa living free from violence," said Molebatsi.

Gbowee spoke of her work at Women in Peace and Security Network in Accra, Ghana, a peace-building organization she co-founded. She said the vision for the network grew out of her experiences during the civil war in Liberia, when she organized women's groups that took part in the peace negotiations and the demilitarization of Liberia, resulting in the first democratic election of a female head of state in Africa, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

The Women in Peace and Security Network was founded in 2006 out of the need to keep women organized and working toward the common goal of peace in Africa and securing their future by passing on leadership responsibilities to future generations of women.

The initiatives Gbowee mentioned included managing natural resources, increasing advocacy for women's participation in politics and working on security sector reform - training those in security positions to be more sensitive to gender. "This is the tiny work that we do in West Africa," she said.

Discussion then turned to how the security of a country relies not only on being free from war, but in preventing rape and domestic violence, providing access to clean water, health care and legal aid.

Later in the symposium, local panelists Sandra Hodge Benjamin of the V.I. Family Resource Center, Judge Patricia Steele of the Family Division of V.I. Superior Court on St. Croix and Judge Audrey Thomas of the Family Division of V.I. Superior Court on St. Thomas provided local insight on issues of violence as related the Virgin Islands community.

The local panelists remarked on the similarities between the African and Virgin Islands communities in the high numbers of women who do not come forward and pursue their legal rights because of the stigma attached to being a victim of domestic violence.

Topics covered included the church's role in relation to women's rights and the causes of violence in the community, including gang violence and turf wars, which are ongoing problems in the Virgin Islands.

One issue that came up repeatedly in the panel discussion was the idea that victims of violence feel a lack of empowerment and the need for individuals working for good in the community sticking together to combat the bad.

"In this world that we live in, there are more good people than there are evil people, but the problem is the good people don't step out and the few evil people that do step out take control. When good people step out, evil people step back into the shadows," said Gbowee.

Gbowee's story will be told through film at 8 p.m. today as The Forum hosts a screening of the award-winning documentary, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" in Prior-Jollek Hall on the Antilles School campus. Following the screening, there will be a discussion featuring Gbowee and the Honorable Milton Nathaniel Barnes, Liberia's ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.

Tickets for the screening are $25 and include a $10 donation to the Liberia Renaissance Foundation. Teachers are $10. Students are free with a student ID.

- Contact reporter Genevieve Ryan at 774-8772 ext. 340 or e-mail gryan@dailynews.vi.