In her career as a model, actress, and designer, Liya Kebede has traveled the globe. But as her philanthropic foundation and tireless advocacy for the women of Ethiopia prove, her heart still belongs to her homeland.
When Liya Kebede gave birth to her two children in New York, she did so in a state-of-the-art hospital—as most mothers in the developed world do, and most take for granted. But in Kebede’s native Ethiopia, she says, “Ninety percent of women deliver their babies at home, without the supervision of trained medical professionals. So if complications occur, it’s often impossible to get help in time.” It’s the stark contrast between these two realities that drives Kebede to spend a significant amount of her time advocating for maternal health care in her homeland, a largely rural country where last year 9,000 women died giving birth.
To that end, she established the Liya Kebede Foundation in 2005, which works with regional aid organizations across Africa to train health care professionals in obstetrics and neonatal care. In 2011, the foundation opened a maternity center in the town of Hawassa, where, with the help of initiatives including treatment for HIV-positive mothers and immunizations for newborns, the number of healthy births doubled in just a year’s time, and mortality rates for mothers and babies are at a low of about one percent.
While Kebede is passionate about maternal health issues, her foundation is just one part of her increasingly active engagement with the challenges affecting women in Ethiopia and across the African continent—from genital mutilation to the difficulty of obtaining microfinancing. Indeed, although she’s traveled widely through-out her nearly 20-year modeling career (she arrived in Manhattan in 1995), these days the 36-year-old Kebede finds herself looking homeward: She has served as an ambassador for the World Health Organization; worked with both the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Center for Global Development; started a fashion label, Lemlem, which employs Ethiopian weavers; and starred in the film adaptation of Somali model Waris Dirie’s memoir of her genital circumcision, Desert Flower.
Kebede’s dedication to championing women’s causes is a tribute to her own mother, who still lives in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and whom Kebede credits with impressing upon her at an early age the importance of “being in the service of others.” Kebede’s mother taught her how to roll up her sleeves and get things done. “She’s the fixer in the family,” says the model. “Everyone calls my mom when they need advice, including me. Whenever I have a problem, she helps me sort it out.”
Kebede is trying to be a similar sort of role model for her own children,13-year-old Suhul and 8-year-old Raee, to whom she wants to bestow a global perspective. “I talk to the kids about issues,” she says. “But they need to travel and experience different ways of life. If you don’t go anywhere, you’re much more likely to sit in judgment.” And so she travels with her children as much as possible: to Ethiopia twice a year, and to places like Bali (a trip she says was inspired by reading Eat, Pray, Love), Istanbul (a favorite destination for the mix of ancient and modern), and of course Paris (which she visits frequently for work).
But it was an experience at an event in their own city that made the most lasting impression on her family. Last spring, Kebede took Suhul and Raee to the reception for Glamour magazine’s 2013 Women of the Year awards (she was an honoree), and together they listened to a speech by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in 2012 for going to school and who has since become a global advocate for girls’ right to an education. “It was a lot for them to hear, but I was happy to see how interested they were,” Kebede says. “They need to know how fortunate they are and what a privilege it is to have an education when there are women fighting for pencils so they can go to school. I hope it sticks with them."