Rising Heart

By Aminata Conteh-Biger
Biography & Memoir
About Rising Heart
In 1999, Sierra Leone teenager Aminata Conteh-Biger was kidnapped from her father's arms during the brutal eleven-year civil war in her country. Violence, amputation and the rape of young women and girls were all weapons deployed in the bloody conflict; in this environment, Aminata was held captive for months.
 
On release, the UNHCR recognised that Aminata's captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. Still a teenager, she was put on a plane, flown to Australia - a land she had barely heard of - and told to start again.
 
Refusing to let her trauma define her, she eventually built a life for herself, but a near-death experience during the birth of her first child turned her attention to the women of Sierra Leone, where mothers are 200 times more likely to die having a baby than in Australia. So she set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, and went back to help.
About Rising Heart
In 1999, Sierra Leone teenager Aminata Conteh-Biger was kidnapped from her father's arms during the brutal eleven-year civil war in her country. Violence, amputation and the rape of young women and girls were all weapons deployed in the bloody conflict; in this environment, Aminata was held captive for months.
 
On release, the UNHCR recognised that Aminata's captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. Still a teenager, she was put on a plane, flown to Australia - a land she had barely heard of - and told to start again.
 
Refusing to let her trauma define her, she eventually built a life for herself, but a near-death experience during the birth of her first child turned her attention to the women of Sierra Leone, where mothers are 200 times more likely to die having a baby than in Australia. So she set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, and went back to help.
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