MONROVIA: The Country Director of the United States Peace Corps in Liberia has challenged Liberian girls to aspire for greatness, to emulate the good example of Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia and Africa’s first democratically elected president.
Vernice Gutherie, the executive director of United States Peace Corps in Liberia, when she delivered the keynote address at the celebration of the Day of the African Child on behalf of the United States deputy chief of mission Catherine Rodriguez.
She reminded the girls Liberia has set enormous important milestone for women, not short of role models like former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her fellow Nobel Laurette Laymah Gborwee.
The US diplomat underscored the need for the Liberian girls to persevere through the challenges life brings their way to succeed.
“Commit yourself to your own greatness, looking at the examples of your former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who was born and raised in Liberia like anyone one of you,” Vernice noted.
The Girls Alliance for Future Leadership organized the celebration that brought together 100 female students from five high schools in Central Monrovia at the Wells Hairston High School on Mechlin Street.
Delivering a statement on behalf of the girls statement, the secretary general of Girls Alliance, Kadiatu Bah, called on the government to prioritize education.
She implored the Boakai the administration to give free and compulsory primary education in both public and private schools.
“This is our appeal,” Ms Bah said. “Take this as a deal. Please accept the that no child is left behind in the development of the country”.
She added: “We believe you can do it. When you do this, you will be creating a generation that will practice no war because the reality of poverty, hunger and disease, principal factors that influence war will be non-existence.”
The Day of the African Child is celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991, when the Organization of African Unity first initiated it. It honors those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976 on this day. It also raises awareness of the continuing need for improvement of the education provided to African children.
In Soweto, South Africa, on June 16, 1976, about ten thousand black school children marched in a column more than half a mile long, protesting the inadequate quality of their education and demanding their right to be taught in their own language. Hundreds of young students were fatally shot at. More than a hundred people were killed in the protests.
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