Post written by Christa Avampato. You can follow Christa on Twitter.

“There will come a time when you believe that everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” ~ Louis L’Amour

A few weeks ago I attended a screening of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a documentary that tells the story of the how the women of Liberia ended the civil war that ravaged their country for well over a decade. Donning identical white t-shirts, no weapons, 2500+ women linked arms and made their opinions and demands known, loudly and publicly, week after week, until Charles Taylor and the warlords sat down together.

These were ordinary women: mothers, wives, daughters. They had had enough of war; they had seen enough blood and senseless loss of life. And they made the decision to stop this, or die trying. Sitting idly by was no longer an option, warlords or no warlords, Charles Taylor or no Charles Taylor, this war would end.

The screening had one of the most diverse audiences I’ve seen at an event like this. Men and women, old and young, many races, a variety of languages being spoken all around me, some in jeans, some in suits. I sat behind a block of people from UNIFEM. They all wore shirts that said simply “half the world deserves a whole voice.” The event coincided, quite purposefully, with the United Nations International Day of Peace, and while we watched the movie, thousands of other people around the world were engaged in the same activity.

The feeling of unity was palpable.

While some of the images were difficult to watch, some of the stories so gruesome as to be almost unimaginable, the majority of the movie is uplifting. And this one has a happy conclusion. While still a country with more than its fair share of challenges and issues, many serious, Liberia became the first and only country in Africa to have a female President, put into office by a free, fair, and open majority election.

And it is all thanks to the women of Liberia who refused to be silent, who refused to let history take its course. They wrote their own history.

Consider something difficult in your life, something that you fear you cannot do. “How can little me do something to improve the big world around me?” Now consider the women of Liberia. They got arguably the most ruthless dictator in history to sit down at the bargaining table with equally ruthless warlords and negotiate peace.

They locked those men in a room and refused to let them come out until a peace agreement was signed and free majority elections were scheduled. Now what was it again that you thought you weren’t able to do?

And while their work in that instance is done, all of the women interviewed in Pray the Devil Back to Hell said they would continue to be there, no matter what, to make sure that their country never endured the horrid history they had to witness with their own eyes and hearts. The war may be over, but their work has only just begun.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell will be released on DVD through Amazon on November 10, 2009. To find future screenings of the film in your area, click here.

To find out more about how you can get involved in this cause, visit UNIFEM, the women’s fund at the United Nations, dedicated to advancing women’s rights and achieving gender equality, and Peace is Loud, an NGO that supports organizations and individuals focused specifically on peace-building around the world through non-violent methods.