Monrovia-The Secretary-General of the Liberia Business Association (LIBA), Madam Leelai M. Kpukuyou has called on students of the Faith Foundation Academy Elementary School in Slipway to learn to develop positive self-esteem.
“Your beginning does not determine your future,” he told the students. “With the sacrifices you make, you can have a better life tomorrow.”
Serving as guest speaker at the school during the weekend, Madam Kpukuyou told the students to also appreciate their parents, saying the sacrifices the parents are making are for the students to have a better life and future.
“Tomorrow, twenty, thirty years from now, you will be surprise to know among you here there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are ministers, there are pastors, there are—I mean you just name it—great leaders of your community,” Madam Kpukuyou said.
“There are children that go to million dollars school and they leave from there and they make nothing of themselves because they get spoon-fed. With that, you don’t truly know the value of things. And down the line you who your parents are suffering for; to wake up in the morning to sell for you to eat—ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line –you will see that you will be in a better position than some of those very children”, she added.
Slipway is one of the slum communities in Monrovia that has been rated low due to sanitation and a huge illiteracy rate. But the LIBA SG called on the graduating students to never allow their background to be a determinant factor for their future.
“So, never ever look down on yourself, no matter what the situation is; you are unique, you are beautiful, you are intelligent, you are smart and regardless of someone in their Mercedes Benz and you are walking, walk quietly to school…”
She further called on the students to remain studious, even as they go for vacation.
“I ask each and every one of you, when the school year closes, don’t take the books and push it under the bed. Don’t say because mama don’t know book, papa don’t know book, they don’t have to force me to study.”
Madam Kpukuyou pledged $25,000 Liberian Dollars to the school during a mini rally and donated $1,000 LD to the valedictorian of the school, Veria Wheagar.
J.H. Webster Clayeh (0886729972) [email protected]