Background
Whilst guns may have fallen silent in Sierra Leone after the eleven (11) years rebel war, the problem of youth and children engaging in cliques, violence, ghettos, gangs, terrorism, conflicts, armed robbery, social exclusion, alcoholism and misuse of drugs, are still a reality. This opens a new battlefield for the authorities with an assumption of frightening proportions. If not tackled urgently and decisively it may consume a whole generation of our Youth and children.
To solve such issues, we have been working in collaboration with Young Peacebuilders in New York, USA. We are together engaging in intensive peace education and leadership training interventions within Bo City, Sierra Leone. This will reverse the trend towards harmful behavior. We have been reaching out, mobilizing, re-orientating and building the capacity of youth and children in and out of schools by setting them up into peace clubs to educate them on the issues of violence, drug abuse, alcoholism and rudiments of peace, mindfulness, good leadership and non-violence. This emphasis is on the need for them to become effective peacebuilders and leaders who will be fully involved in the process of peace and good leadership promotion in their schools and communities. Currently our peace education project is operating in two schools, United Brethren in Christ Junior Secondary School, which is in Moriba town; and Aladura Junior Secondary School, which is in the Kennedy community in Kakua Chiefdom.
This project has helped to transform most of our young people into effective peacebuilders in their schools and communities. It has further helped in removing some of the roadblocks faced by young people that normally serve as barriers for them to expose their peacebuilding potentials. This builds bridges that strengthen their peacebuilding capacities as they too have been helping to share their peacebuilding experiences derived from the peace club training with their fellow colleagues in schools and communities.
Key Activities:
Our peace education and good leadership project have been using the following strategies in ensuring the realization of our peacebuilding activities:
Communication: To communicate clearly and consistently with the Young Peacebuilder team abroad and partners locally to ensure efficient, well informed and expanding collaboration.
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