Youth Action International is a non-governmental organization that uses grassroots techniques to develop and implement programs that help alleviate the suffering of children affected by war or living in difficult circumstances, empower them to reach their full potential, and break cycles of violence and poverty.
Read the YAI 2008 Annual Report: Empowering Africa (pdf)
Greg Antonucci has been a private investor for thirty years. In 2005 he successfully started his own hedge fund he is also the founder of The Circle of Life Foundation and the HEAR (Health Education and Relief) Foundation. Greg has done service work throughout the United States, Guatemala, and Ireland and also supports many worthwhile causes.Greg received his Bachelor of Business from Illinois State University. He has held a seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for over 30 years. He has been married for 27 years and is the father of four children.
Valerie C. Chritton is the CFO of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce in Jacksonville, Florida. Ms. Chritton earned her J.D. in 1984 from Columbia University School of Law. She earned her B.A. degree magna cum laude in 1978 from Duke University, where she was an Angier B. Duke Scholar. As an Angier B. Duke Scholar, she studied at New College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, in 1977. Ms. Chritton is the immediate past president of the Jacksonville Chapter of CISV International which promotes peace and global friendship through multi-cultural educational experiences world-wide. She served on the board of the I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless (”IMS”) in Jacksonville, Florida, for 7 years (and as treasurer of IMS for 5 years). Ms. Chritton is a member of the Leadership Jacksonville Class of 2008.
Erik Falconer, CFA serves as Chief Investment Officer for the Falconer Wealth Managers. Erik enjoys spending time with the loves of his life: his wife and three daughters. They enjoy traveling, school activities and playing games. He also loves biking, kayaking, playing soccer, reading, and singing.
Saikon Gbehan serves as the National Coordinator of the Youth Action International College Chapters Program. She is a litigation attorney at Adler Pollock & Sheehan, P.C. in Providence, RI. Ms. Gbehan graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 2004 with a B.A. in Psychology, magna cum laude, and a minor in Business Administration. She went on to earn her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law in 2008.
Allison Maranuk has been with Youth Action International from its very beginnings. She has served as Youth Action International’s Director of Communications and National Coordinator in addition to being a founding Board Member. As a Leanna Brown Fellow, she had the privilege of traveling to Sierra Leone six months after the peacekeepers were removed to conduct a feasibility study for a Center for Women Empowerment. The project has since been replicated in Monrovia, Liberia. Allison has been a lifelong member of Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV) and has served on the CISV National Junior Board. She currently serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the National Youth Coalition Student Assembly- Sierra Leone in addition to providing strategic guidance to several well-established and newly emerging social enterprises focused on economic development and public health in Latin America and Africa. Allison has an A.B. from Smith College in Government and Spanish and currently resides in New York City.
Elizabeth Means is an English and Language Arts teacher at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Art & Music and Performing Arts, part of the New York City Public School system. Teaching is her second career after 25 years in business where Ms. Means worked in marketing, advertising, market research, and brand development for a number of marketing companies, advertising agencies, and consulting firms. Among these, Ms. Means spent close to 15 years at Citibank in a number of roles—as a Marketing Director for the US credit card division, as Director of Global Branding at the corporate level, and as the Director of Global Marketing for The Citibank Private Bank. She graduated from Williams College with a BA in History of Ideas and has a Masters in English Education from Columbia Teachers College. Ms. Means has been involved with education and organizations supporting children at risk for many years; she is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board for the Association to Benefit Children, an organization supporting disadvantaged and medically fragile children and their families, primarily in East Harlem.
Levan Moulton immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee from the Liberian civil war in 1989. Although born in Madison, WI, Mr. Moulton spent his first 5 years in Monrovia, Liberia while his mother was a Professor at the University of Liberia. Mr. Moulton’s family settled in Raleigh, North Carolina after their evacuation. Mr. Moulton went on to graduate from the Northfield Mount Hermon School in 2003, where he was the first ever TYP student elected to the Northfield Mount Hermon Student Government Association. Mr. Moulton then attended Amherst College and graduated in May of 2007 with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in Political Science. At Amherst, Mr. Moulton served as President of the Dr. Charles Drew Memorial House for Black Culture where he spear-headed programming that educated the Amherst student body about the rich heritage of the African Diaspora. Mr. Moulton also served as a member of the Association for Amherst Students, Amherst College’s Student Government body. In 2006, Mr. Moulton served as a research fellow for the Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising at Harvard Law School. While at Amherst, Mr. Moulton became involved with Youth Action International and served the burgeoning organization in various capacities. Mr. Moulton now works in the Interest Rate Products Division at Goldman Sachs & Co.
Cherrine Smith is a long time supporter of YAI. For two decades she has serve as a volunteer with international charities. She has hosted international students in her home from China, India, Austria, Great Britain, Malaysia and the Ivory Coast. Her passion has been educational opportunities for disadvantage girls, and refugee relief. Locally she spent hours as a volunteer delivering hot meals to the elderly for Meals on Wheels. Cherrine lunched her women’s apparel company in 2003. Her career includes many years of service as a Director with the Nature Conservancy, and in state service as an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Officer. Cherrine enjoys spending time with her family and traveling.
On June 15th, the Chase Community Giving will begin. Voters will be able to use their facebook accounts to determine which organizations will win one of the many cash prizes.
Our ability to win this money to help us continue our work in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda depends on your vote. So please take a moment to click the VOTE NOW link, login to your facebook account and vote for us.
I’ve been thinking about what to write since I came back from Liberia. I am from Spain and English is my fourth language – I also speak Spanish, Italian, and Catalan. So as you can imagine, it took me forever to put all my thoughts in order in English.
My name is Esther Rodriguez-Brown. My husband, Michael, and I are the founders of The Embracing Project, a non profit organization we created to educate inner city youth about the similarities between genocide and gang activity. One purpose of this journey is to expose inner city youth to the experiences of children soldiers in different parts of the world and then to create a pen-pal relationship between both groups.
Every year, Kimmie Weeks embarks on a nationwide speaking tour to motivate young people to become pioneers of change. To date, thousands of students have heard his message and many of them have gone on to start their own humanitarian organizations or have joined other change-making programs.
Contact Natsumi Ajiki: natsumi @ peaceforkids.org
“What have I gotten myself into?”
This is a question that has come up many times on my journey to Africa.
I suppose to clarify, and so as not to sound like a cynic, I should explain a little bit about myself. I’ve been a photographer for two and a half years now. When I first picked up a camera the only thought that went through my head was “Awesome, now I have a big chunk of metal, plastic and glass that will allow me to take clearer photos and I’ll soon be rich and famous as a result of having this camera!”
This was not the case as I am neither rich, nor famous (side from my own delusions of grandeur.) Anyways all of that is beside the point. If someone had told me the day that I picked up that camera that it would eventually lead me to post war West Africa, I would have laughed in their faces. Not because traveling to West Africa is a crazy idea, but simply because I did not see myself ever getting past the stage of “hobbyist” photography.
And yet, here I sit, in Sierra Leone, thousands of miles from home (6168 miles approximately) volunteering as the photographer for Youth Action International.
Now in regards to Africa, particularly Sierra Leone and Liberia, I don’t think that anything could have really prepared me for what I would experience here. This is including Kimmie’s ‘worst case scenario’ description of Liberia.
I wish I had been more diligent about documenting my experiences and reactions in Liberia, but I seemed to always put off the act of writing. I always told myself I was too tired or busy, but the truth is that I had a very difficult time reflecting on the barrage of experiences at the time. Throughout my time in Africa, I realized that I did not once shed a tear. It was only once I was on the plane from Accra to New York, on my way back to my privileged and comfortable life, that I was able to absorb the memories and the pictures that I was taking with me. As I looked through the pictures I had taken on my camera, I cried for a half an hour straight. I cried thinking about the hopeful faces on the small children at Temas Orphanage that I was leaving. I cried for young people of Grand Bassa County who do not have the opportunity to go to school. I cried because I realized that my life would be changed forever and I cried because I felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
A cross-section of observers, traditional and religious leaders, local and international media stormed Ri-Kwangba last week to witness the historical moment were Joseph Kony, the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) leader was supposed to sign the final peace agreement. The rest of the world held its breath to witness the day that northern Uganda would finally get to normalcy after 20 years of conflict between the Government of Uganda and the LRA rebels.
“Aren’t you nervous?” my dear friend carefully asked me when I told her that I’d be visiting Uganda. That’s how my parents reacted at first. I told myself it is not because Uganda is part of Africa that they are worried for my travel. Traveling to new places is always uncertain to some extent. However, I couldn’t deny that part of me was more worried than usual. What would I see? How would I feel? What should I expect? Am I mature enough? Above all, the question was ‘why would I want to go visit Africa’? I cannot tell Uganda story leaving out the influence of Kimmie and Youth Action International. I actually met Kimmie at Northfield Mount Hermon High School where Kimmie graduated from.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an Acholi-based opposition group led by Joseph Kony has been fighting first against president Museveni’s government, and currently against other Acholi peoples. The Acholi are an ethnic group who live in Northern Uganda. Though Kony, leader of the LRA reportedly believes he has been chosen by God to overthrow president Museveni and establish a government based on the Ten Commandments, and a purified Acholi race, the LRA has yet to explain its goals or put forth any sort of political agenda.
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I wasn’t promised an African sunset. When Kimmie Weeks invited me on a humanitarian mission through post-conflict countries, what came to mind were the stunning landscape pictures my friends had brought back from the ranch in Kenya. It was how I had envisioned this beautiful continent. Streaks of red and orange, firing up the night sky of deep blue and purple: a kaleidoscope of color. Instead, I found another kind of sunset. I found the African people wasting away, dying brutal, horrific deaths at the hands of war, disease, and poverty. I found the sun setting on their lives. Not fading into the night with brilliant lights, but being shredded into a nonexistence wracked with pain and suffering. Continue reading
I traveled to Liberia and Sierra Leone with Kimmie Weeks during the summer of 2006 to assist him and carry out research for YAI. I am originally from Tanzania and was excited to visit west Africa. I was confident I would adjust to Sierra Leone pretty quickly, because hey, it was still Africa wasn’t it? And I’m half African. Continue reading
