By Tokpa Tarnue, tarnue82@gmail.com
Kolahun, Liberia – Eighteen youths, some of them ex-combatants, commercial sex workers and single mothers have graduated from an 8-month vocational skills training program in Kolahun, Lofa County in northwestern Liberia.
The Liberia National Red Cross Society (LNRCS) Lofa chapter conducted the training with support from the Danish Red Cross as part of its vocational skills training and integrated project. The graduation ceremony took place recently.
According to the Mr. Joseph M. Vannie LNRCS field officer for Lofa, The Liberia National Red Cross Society (LNRCS) in December 2017 identified, recruited, counseled and trained the 18 youths in seven different skills program.
He named the disciplines as cosmetology, soap making, masonry, tailoring, computer science, auto mechanic and clothes weaving.
The Red Cross Skills Training Program which has been carried out in Foya, Kolahun, Vahun, and Voinjama districts seeks to restore the dignity, values and morals of vulnerable and marginalized women, boys and girls who lives in the streets, neighborhoods or communities and have neither formal education nor skill, according to Mr. Vannie.
The narration of success stories by some of the graduates turned the entire ceremony into joy as quoted below.
Name withheld “I want to tell the Liberia National Red Cross Society thank you plenty because the live I use to live has change; you will not believe that I use to go around looking for man just for short time and some of them will give me as low as $10 Liberian Dollars and the reason is because I am the one who use to go after them and not them calling me”.
Another Graduate “For me, any time something loss in the community, I will be the first person that the police will arrest whether I know about it or not because of my bad habit but this auto mechanic work that I finish learn, I will not go back to those bad habit again, so let me say big think you to the Liberia National Red Cross Society”.