An Open Letter to Goretti Itoka on Her Decision to Host the Strengthening Families Conference
JOURNALRAGE EDITORIAL BOARD · MONROVIA, LIBERIA · JUNE 2026
Goretti Itoka knows what it means to be looked at and underestimated.
She grew up in Monrovia, worked her way through Stella Maris Polytechnic University while building her own agribusiness, launched a children’s television show, wrote for newspapers, interned at Sky FM, and founded her own nonprofit — all before her name became nationally known.
As Miss Mano River Union International, she donated toiletries and water to Benson Hospital in Paynesville, worked with the National WASH Commission, and described her platform as an opportunity to reach out to companies on behalf of the communities they serve.
This is a woman who built herself from the ground up, who understands what it means to fight for visibility in a system that was not designed to see you, and who has used every platform she has been given to give something back to the people around her.
Which is exactly why journalRAGE is writing this.
Because Goretti Itoka has agreed to host and emcee the 8th Strengthening Families Conference at the EJS Exhibition Complex in Monrovia on June 19–20, 2026. And in doing so, she is about to lend her face, her voice, her credibility, and her platform to an institution that has spent 126 years deciding who belongs. And whose history makes her own story not just irrelevant, but theologically impossible.
We are asking her to put the microphone down.
WHO IS BEHIND THIS CONFERENCE
The 8th Strengthening Families Conference is organized, funded, and directed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. This institution formally barred Black men and women from its temples and priesthood for 126 years, from 1852 to 1978. It taught, officially and in writing, that Black people were cursed — descendants of Cain, less valiant in their premortal existence, spiritually inferior to white members of the same faith. It only repudiated the theology behind that exclusion in 2013. It has never formally apologized.
The conference it is hosting promotes a definition of family in which fathers preside and mothers are primarily responsible for nurturing children. It has no framework for the single mother. No space for the widow. No category for the woman who heads her own household. Under the values this conference promotes, the hundreds of thousands of Liberian women who raise their families alone — widows, survivors, women who left violent marriages — are deficient. Incomplete. Problems requiring correction.
And this conference is not a standalone event. It is the opening move in a documented legislative pipeline that has produced life imprisonment in Uganda and three-year prison sentences in Ghana. Liberia’s Anti-LGBTQ bill is already on the floor of the House. The cash to push it through comes after the conference closes.
That is the event Goretti Itoka has agreed to host.
WHAT HOSTING MEANS
An emcee is not a neutral presence. An emcee is the human face of an event. She sets the tone. She welcomes the guests. She introduces the speakers. She keeps the energy alive when attention dips. She is, for everyone in the room, the person who makes the event feel like home.
When Goretti Itoka walks out onto that stage at the EJS Exhibition Complex on June 19 and says “Welcome to the 8th Strengthening Families Conference” — her face becomes the face of this conference. Her voice becomes its voice. Her credibility — earned across years of genuine humanitarian work, real community engagement, and the kind of personal resilience that cannot be faked — becomes the credibility of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its legislative agenda in Liberia.
She will be used. That is not a harsh way of putting it. It is the precise and accurate way of putting it.
The conference organizers did not choose a Liberian woman to host this event because they value Liberian women. They chose a Liberian woman to host this event because her presence neutralizes the most obvious criticism — that this is a foreign institution imposing foreign values on Liberia. With Goretti Itoka on that stage, they can say: look, a Liberian woman is welcoming you. This is not foreign. This is yours.
It is not hers. It is not ours. And she should not let them use her face to say that it is.
THE CONTRADICTION SHE WOULD BE LIVING
Goretti Itoka has run a children’s television show called School Life. She has worked in communities. She has promoted Liberian agricultural women through her business AgroRetti. She has described herself as passionate about service.
The institution she would be hosting on June 19 teaches that a woman’s primary responsibility is to stay home and nurture — that her worth is located in her domestic role, under the presiding authority of a man. It teaches this not as a suggestion but as divine design. It encodes it in its foundational doctrine.
Goretti Itoka’s entire life is the refutation of that doctrine. Everything she has built — the business, the television show, the nonprofit, the modelling career, the humanitarian work, the public profile — is proof that a Liberian woman’s worth is not located in her domestic role. It is located in her mind, her ambition, her courage, and her willingness to show up.
She would be lending that proof to an institution that would use it to sell the opposite message.
The conference theme says it is about women’s empowerment. But the doctrine behind it defines empowerment as nurturing under male authority. These things cannot both be true. And Goretti Itoka — who has lived the real version of women’s empowerment — knows the difference.
WHAT WE ARE ASKING
journalRAGE is not calling for Goretti Itoka to be harassed or attacked. We are calling on her to think — carefully, fully, and with the seriousness that her own platform deserves — about what she is about to do.
We are asking her to spend one hour reading what journalRAGE has published about this conference. One hour learning about the 126 years. One hour reading the LDS Family Proclamation and understanding what it says about women. One hour looking at what happened in Uganda and Ghana after their conferences, and at the bill currently sitting on the floor of Liberia’s House of Representatives.
And then we are asking her to make a decision — not about a hosting fee, not about an opportunity, but about whose story she is going to tell when she steps onto that stage.
Because there are women in Liberia who cannot step onto any stage right now. Women who are already living in fear because of the legislative climate this conference is designed to accelerate. Women who built their lives and their families and their households in ways that this conference’s doctrine would classify as wrong. Women who have been watching Goretti Itoka’s journey and who would be watching her on June 19 — and who need to know that she sees them.
A FINAL WORD
Goretti Itoka has described herself as a strong, confident and determined individual, grateful for every opportunity that has helped her grow.
We believe that. We have seen the evidence of it. And it is precisely because we believe it that we are writing this — because a strong, confident, and determined Liberian woman should not be the warm, welcoming face of a foreign church’s effort to define what Liberian families are allowed to look like.
You have worked too hard for that. Your community has invested too much in you for that. And the women of Liberia — the ones who cannot speak right now, the ones who are watching, the ones whose families look nothing like the template this conference promotes — deserve better than to see your face on that stage.
Put the mic down, Goretti.
The women who built this movement deserve an MC who is working for them — not for the institution that is coming for them.
journalRAGE extends a standing offer to publish any response from Goretti Itoka in full, unedited, on our platform. Contact us at contact@journalrage.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an editorial representing the position of journalRAGE. Founded in 2019. Liberia’s independent platform for human rights journalism. Goretti Itoka was not contacted for comment before publication of this draft; standard journalistic practice requires right of reply before final publication.