Molly Melching

Molly Melching is the founder and executive director of Tostan (meaning "breakthrough" in the Wolof language), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) whose mission it is to empower African communities for sustainable development and social transformation in the respect of human rights. Tostan and Melching have gained international notice for their work with partner communities to encourage the abandonment of female genital cutting and child/forced marriage in Senegal, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Under Tostan's Community Empowerment Program, a community may elect to participate in a three-year, nonformal, education and community organizing training. To date, 2,996 communities have decided, after participating in Tostan's Program, to abandon FGC through a public declaration, over half of the 5,000 estimated to have practiced in 1997. To date in Guinea, 298 communities have declared, and 20 have declared in Burkina Faso.

Melching's expertise is in developing educational materials for use at the village level in Africa, and she helped create the Tostan Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Melching's work along with Senegalese communities has also contributed to several innovative community development and communication techniques including the model of organized diffusion of information and the use of the public declaration for the abandonment of FGC and child/forced marriage.

In 1999, she received the Humanitarian Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and in 2002, the Sargent Shriver Distinguished Award for Humanitarian Service.