Monrovia – For many young Liberians, finding a career remains a serious challenge. Many times they shift from one career discipline to another because of the lack of guidance in choosing a career.
One youth group appears to be dedicated to tackling this challenge faced by young people seeking tertiary education.
YONER-Liberia visited several schools in Paynesville, explaining its program to senior high students. One of the schools, the Paynesville Community School benefited from the group’s outreach as part of YONER-Liberia anniversary celebration.
YONER-Liberia Executive Director Andrew Greaves said his organization will work with high school students to provide career guidance for them, adding that the lack of such program is hampering the academic performance of many students.
Greaves said students will be mentored and given the opportunity to interact with professionals.
The group, as part of its celebration gave out food items to elderly, mostly women. The donation of food items was made possible through its board member, Leticia Reeves.
According to YONER-Liberia Executive Director, in the past eight years the organization has directly impacted the lives of more than 30,000 youth and children.
Greaves said in their project, communities’ scholarships has been provided to deserving students.
“We have conducted training, and engage in advocacy and other community services including waste management and business networking and continue to play a major role in the peace-building and sustainable development processes in post war Liberia with too many unproductive, unsupervised youths who were used as child soldiers and are the youths of today through valuable structured programs,” Greaves said.
Greaves continued: “YONER-Liberia uses volunteer community service, local scholarships and entrepreneurial/start-ups training including inter-community peace and reconciliation sports tournaments, dialogues to engage and empower young people to promote positive values, healthy habits, and education– resulting in real life power.”
After Liberia’s long 14-year civil war ended and a democratic government elected in 2006, Jarius Andrew Greaves, a victim of the civil war led and established the Youth Network for Reform (YONER-Liberia) in 2008.
Since August 20, 2010 the group as a Legal non-governmental organization (NGO) in Liberia has the primary goal of re-uniting communities and civil war enemies especially, the thousands of child soldiers.
The group’s initiatives have achieved positive socio-economic development for youth.
