The POWER OF PEACE™ Podcast, Barbara Gaughen-Muller interviews artist and cultural innovator Leslie Clark. Leslie is founder/owner of Nomad Gallery and, since 1993, founder/president of Nomad Foundation, both based in Ojai, California. In this Power of Peace™ podcast learn how Leslie started her traveling as a painter in Africa and how her firsthand experience of armed conflict brought her a deeper respect for the Nomads. For 25+ years, she has worked to provide education, medical care, vocational training and water for under-served, marginalized nomadic groups on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger. Find out about her mission: stability and social and economic well-being to nomadic cultures of the Sahara. See how she has worked to bring an understanding of these “exotic” cultures through long-term cultural exchange and economic support through sales of their artistic creations.
Her story shows us how she transformed lives and continues to change the lives of everyone involved through her long-term project:
Digging wells to supply clean water
Installing solar power with panels built & installed by nomads through a nomad foundation training program to provide electricity to remote & rural areas in the developing world
Financing earth dams & “demilunes” (soil berms for water retention & erosion control)
Building essential structures while training local populations how to construct these using earthbag building technique & only local materials
Creating a medical clinic, boarding school, adult education center, and more
