TOOLS CAN BREAK THE CYCLE OF WAR IN LIBERIA
Browntown Baptist Church World Mission is sending hand tools and agricultural tools to Liberia in West Africa to assist that country in it's re-building effort following 14 years of brutal, devastating civil war. Agricultural tools and carpentry hand tools are being collected by BBCWM to send to Liberia for distribution to vocational training and agricultural development programs. Special focus is on making the tools available to programs for re-integration of child combatants.
“Now that the fighters have put down their weapons, Liberians need tools to take up in re-building their lives and their country,” Keith Turner, BBCWM coordinator said. Vocational training programs and agricultural project enrollments are at capacity and tools are in meager supply to meet the huge demand. “There is urgency in getting these tools into their hands before frustration and disillusionment sets in and they return to the only thing they know – weapons and war,” Turner explained.
Liberians now rely almost totally on humanitarian aid for food supply. Thirty percent of children suffer from malnutrition and many survive on a single small meal of rice per day. Some humanitarian relief organizations predict a crisis of starvation in Liberia within the next few months if there is not a major return to agriculture and farming with local food production. Tools and seeds are necessary to renew the nation’s once-thriving farming culture and agricultural economy.
The re-building process will be long and difficult for Liberia where the particularly brutal war targeted innocent citizens displacing more than one million people, destroyed the nation’s infrastructure and pressed children into service as soldiers. United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that as many as 250,000 children were forced to kill and maim, steal, pillage and provide services to adult fighters during the long war years. Christian missions are cooperating with the UN and NGOs in Liberia on projects to re-integrate traumatized former child combatants into society and provide the former child soldiers with opportunities to become productive citizens.
Institutions such as hospitals, clinics and schools were destroyed by war and need to be re-constructed to ready communities for the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees who were forced from their homes and villages by war. Eighty percent of the nation’s schools were destroyed or rendered useless by war and children want to return to school. There is a pressing need for carpenters and tools to re-construct public facilities.
Uneducated and orphaned, deprived of childhood, former combatants are exhausted from war and want desperately to build a normal life, according to Rev. Emile Sam-Peal, Interim President of the Liberian Baptist Seminary in Monrovia. Rev. Sam-Peal works closely with re-integration programs and former child combatants. “These children and young adults cannot wait until Liberia recovers to be trained and educated. Their lives have already been irreparably disrupted and their childhood lost. They need to know now that there is hope for a future without war and guns and that they are part of the re-building of Liberia.”.