Birthing the Magic Collaborative is honored to introduce our village to Ms. Caroline Peters, an internationally recognized human rights defender, survivor, gender justice advocate, and movement builder who has transformed lived experience into decades of action for women, families, and communities across South Africa.

With more than three decades of frontline advocacy and community leadership, Caroline is the founder and Executive Director of the Callas Foundation in Cape Town. She has built a career confronting gender-based violence where it actually happens, in homes, neighborhoods, courts, taverns, barbershops, and community spaces. In 2026, she was appointed to the inaugural National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, bringing that hard-earned, community-rooted expertise to the national stage.

Caroline knows this reality from both sides, as a survivor and as a woman who has spent decades fighting to change the conditions that allow violence to persist. She transformed her own traumatic experience into action, creating pathways to safety and justice while demanding greater accountability from the institutions and systems meant to protect women and children.

But perhaps most compelling is where Caroline believes change begins. She does not wait for people to walk into traditional programs or for a crisis to bring them to the system. She goes where people already are. Through the Callas Foundation, conversations about violence, trauma, emotional well-being, masculinity, and healthy relationships happen in barbershops, taverns, schools, and neighborhoods. Men and boys are not treated as bystanders to the problem. They are intentionally brought into the work of prevention.

This is an opportunity to hear from a woman doing this work thousands of miles away, in communities with their own histories and challenges, and to discover how remarkably connected our experiences truly are.

Caroline’s courage is extraordinary, but what moved me most is what she chose to do with it. She took what could have silenced her and turned it into a force for protection, justice, healing, and change for women and girls.

There is something powerful about hearing from a woman who has lived the issue, challenged the systems around it, and helped shape a national response.

I believe this conversation will stretch us, connect us, and stay with us long after it ends. Caroline’s perspective pushes us beyond the conversations we usually have about maternal health and asks us to think more deeply about what safety really requires for women and families.

Please make time for this conversation. I truly believe Caroline will leave us thinking differently about courage, prevention, community, and what it takes to create real safety.