UNOY Global Network Members

The African Child Peace Initiative (ACPI) is a youth-led secular, non-tribal, non-political, non-governmental peace and community development organization dedicated to creating a better future for the children and young people in post-war Liberia through our youth friendly community development and peacebuilding programmes.

Our goal is to educate young Liberians, their immediate concern and their communities in order to nurture the development of responsible, peaceful, healthy and productive citizens, helping to alleviate poverty at the grass-root. We are working with Liberian youth affected by the civil war - especially the children - and young women working with children.

ACPI recognizes African youth as an important resource that can contribute its energy, idealism, and insight to the community’s stability, growth and progress. ACPI focuses on the provision of skill training programs to young people and their caregivers with a view to developing sustainable livelihoods.

ACPI programmes encourage and work with youth for active participation of young people in peace building and community development in Caldwell and surrounding townships. Specifically, the programmes aim to promote the visibility of youth in peace building and policy formation by supporting and facilitating the empowerment of youth in the community. Activities under the proposed Youth Center include peer-to-peer education, computer training, vocational skills building, literacy programmes, youth led community development projects, HIV/AIDS awareness and general health education, and youth advocacy and capacity building. The programme is intended to be directly responsive to the involvement of youth people as actors in community development, peace building, and conflict transformation of the townships.

As a consequence of the war, hundreds of thousands of young Liberians have been robbed of their future through trauma, loss of family, lack of access to education, child labor, poverty, poor nutritional and sanitary conditions, displacement, and exile, exploitation by armed factions, violence and HIV/AIDS. The Caldwell Youth Peace-building Center which was constructed in the Caldwell Township outside Monrovia. Prince Johnson, a warlord notorious for recruiting and drugging child soldiers, once used the Caldwell community as his rebel base. Today the Caldwell and surrounding communities have disintegrated, leaving uneducated and violence prone youth. The ex-combatants and their non ex-combatants contemporaries in these areas had not been working together due to the literal disintegration of the community and the lack of organized youth initiated resources to address the growing apathy in community developments. The Youth Peace-building Center is currently addressing the needs of this community and youth issues of the war affected community. Holistic, community-based approaches to youth needs are the most effective medium to addressing the problems of war affected young people or out of school youth in a post-war country like Liberia. The primary focus of the youth center is to build peace and foster reconciliation between the peoples of Liberia through its integrated programs. Although crucial, peace education and reconciliation are only part of the peace needs of Liberia. The lack of education, on-going poverty and significant health factors are all obstacles to durable peace in the country.

There is now the prospect of peace in Liberia. The situation, however, remains delicate with a United Nations peacekeeping force required. It is crucial for the future development of Liberia that young people and their caregivers are equipped with sufficient skills to create new lives for themselves as they begin to return to their country from refugee camps in the region and re-integrate into the local community. This will reduce the chances of a return to violence in the future. As the history of the Liberian conflict demonstrates, creating peace at the top political levels is not necessarily a sufficient condition for creating peace on the ground. Peace must be built from the ground up. The Youth Peace-building Center is designed to facilitate this process.

The goal of the Caldwell Youth Peace-Building Center is to enhance the life skills of youth and their caregivers as to improve their living conditions and their capacity for building a peaceful future for themselves and for Liberia. The center will promote the visibility of young people especially ex-combatants, non ex-combatants, returnees and war victims in the peace building, re-construction and re-integration and policy formulation of their communities by facilitating the empowerment of the youth. The Center will provide free basic skills training to young, as well as peace education, health, cultural, sports, and drama activities designed to encourage tolerance and respect amongst the youth and to teach them to solve their conflicts in non-violent ways. Other components of the programmes at the center will focus on classes for literacy and numeric skills, together with reunification of separated children with their families and community reintegration through our youth friendly contact programmes.

Specifically, Caldwell Youth Peace-Building Center activities will accomplish the following goals:

Equip young people with the knowledge and skills to gain employment. Likewise, they will provide young people with the professional and "life skills" essential to getting and keeping a job.
Provide necessary information in the areas of reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and basic health education to allow young people to lead healthy productive lives and make informed choices.
Increase accessibility to modern means of communication and develop knowledge of technology.
Develop basic literacy and numeric skills and give young people access to literacy resources.
Increase youth awareness of issues in the community, building a culture of peace and bridging the gap between tribal, political, ethnic and religious divides.
Increase the number of local, educated and skilled youth leaders to play an active role in the peace-building process.

The target population for the Youth Peace Centre will include the Caldwell, New Georgia, and Diggsville township youth population. This will embrace diversity along tribal or ethnic lines, physical capacity, academic ability, grade levels, sex and neighbourhood. This includes over children that are engaged in child labour (such as manual work or hawking) because their carers cannot support them. The centre will work with young people (ex-combatant and non-ex-combatants) age 15-35. The youth category incorporates adolescents, who are technically children and older youths who are technically adults, according to international definitions.

Vocation and life skills training in sewing and basic computer skills will aim to accept fifty percent women into the program. Non-vocational exercises will be conducted on non-specified bases within the local communities and schools.

Overall, the initial intake of youth throughout our various programmes will be over 300 direct beneficiaries and indirect beneficiaries will be hundreds more.