Monrovia – As a photocopier with a disability problem in front of Ecobank in 2005, Mr. Rally T. Fallah, 29, never dreamt of becoming a President of the Mandela Washington Fellowship program.
Report by Mae Azango [email protected]
But serving as the President of the fellowship in Liberia, he is seen as a leader of the group he led diligently, not as a disable.
Meeting Fallah at the U.S. Ambassador Christine Elder’s residence, he said applying for the Mandela program was not easy as he applied in 2014 but did not make it, so he tried again in 2015 and was successful.
In a nut shell, Rally summed up his life story from coming out of a slum community in Kakata, Margibi County and rising above to become President of the Mandela Washington Fellows in Liberia.
“As a young man coming up and faced with these circumstances, I did not think it was the end of my life and so I applied to do an internship at Ecobank and I was spotted by the Executive Director of the Ghanaian Mission at Ecobank who told me there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
While still doing my photocopy business in order to continue my academic journey, I attended the Cap Resource Institution, School for the blind and later enrolled at the Apostolic Foundation School in Sinkor”, he said.
Fallah continued: “I came from a very poor family background in Kakata, but they decided to push me further and send me to the school of the blind when I went blind in 1992 during the Civil War and this has got me to where I am today.
It is an imagination and beacon of hope for me, so people should not see a visually impaired person to only be a beggar and cannot do contribute to society”.
He further explained his experience while in the US when he went to Berkeley, California for civic education, which happened to be a very beautiful experience for him.
“We toured the Moore wood forest, for like three hours, from 7-10 at night because that night was dedicated to me. My supervisor of the Goldman school of public policy felt that everybody should put their foot in my shoe as a blind man.
And I was also opportune to have ridden the boat that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt rode as a President.
And then I went to the White house to shake President Barrack Obama’s hand, which was like a dream come true for me. I would say it was a dream come true for me because looking backward at my life when I could not afford to pay my school fees at that time, and seeing myself shaking the US President’s hand in the White House, I said God, let the glory be yours”, Fallah explained.
Speaking on the action by other blind people who use children to generate funds for them daily, Fallah said he is also a disable advocate and is against such practice by many blind people.
“We should do away with child trafficking and blind people using children to beg for money. I am totally against that child right abuse and it must stop.
Let me say to people with disability to rise up and strive in life, because being blind is not the end of life, if I can change for the better, you can do the same” he concluded.
Another person who benefited from the Young African Leadership Initiative, (YALI) fellowship, is Patience Coleman, working at the Liberia’s Civil Service Agency in Monrovia.
She was part of the 25 fellows from Liberia who went to the U.S. as beneficiaries of the 2016 YALI program, another U.S. supported program.
“We want to thank the US government for such opportunity, because we learned a lot during our six weeks in the US,” she said.
“We met with people in the communities and interacted with them socially and academically and it was very inspiring for us. We shared our experiences and also learned as well.
It was surprising to see people who left their paying jobs on Fridays volunteering to come and help the children with their homework, and that inspired us so much.”
She then told her colleagues to always work together as a team because they are now one.
“Let us work with our various communities and engage stakeholders in carrying this program forward.”
U.S. Ambassador Christine Elder thanked the YALI fellows from 2014, 2015 and 2016 who were all present at the welcome ceremony and invited Education Minister George Werner, and Gender Minister Julia Duncan-Cassel to the podium, turning over the fellows to them.
Education Minister Werner told the fellows to make an impact as they have returned to their country.