I’m gearing up for a trip next week to Ecuador and Bolivia to visit some of World Learning’s programs down there. I’ll be blogging here as I travel, with the hope of sharing a more vivid sense of what happens on our programs on the ground and how we make a difference on key issues.
In Ecuador, I’ll be visiting our International Development program which is focused on child labor in indigenous communities. This theme of “children at risk” is one of our core development priorities at WL and the program in Ecuador has been very successful to date at giving kids a chance to go to school and avoid exploitation and risk.
Which is why it’s timely that Ishmael Beah, author of the best-selling memoir “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” is coming to speak at WL/SIT this evening. I read Beah’s memoir of being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone and was profoundly moved by it, toggling between horror and hope with every chapter. Horror at the ways so many children are exploited and traumatized every day in the world. Hope at reading of Beah’s resilience and ability to not only survive and retain his humanity in the midst of unimaginable violence, but to heal himself and help others who’ve similarly suffered.
Beah manages to give voice to the millions of other children out there who’ve been silenced and deprived of one of the greatest gifts in life: their childhood.
My friend Marj and I did read Ishmael’s “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” and we were so touched as well. It is amazing to meet people like him, and i hope SIT will make it a point to bring him to school next year when we will be studying there.
Bottom line Ishmael, you need to keep up the spirit in you, so that younger boys in such circumstances can know they can overcome, mindless of the situation.
I wish my younger brother could meet you, but i guess Marj and I need to meet you first!