Overview: KUWO Leadership Academy

Background and Country Profile

After 20 years of civil wars, Liberia became synonymous with the carnage wrought by armies of child soldiers. It is now 17 years since the war ended, but the legacy casts an unimaginable shadow over the country. More than 250,000 former child soldiers now young adults and an entire generation with little schooling or parenting. Knowing nothing other than a life at war pose perhaps the single greatest threat to a nation still trying to find its soul.

Liberia’s postwar problem is not limited to former child soldiers, it extends to those left orphaned including those who have grown up during the last seventeen years of peace where abject poverty has condemned 67% of the population between the ages of 18 – 35 to the same fate faced by the generation of former child soldiers before them.

At the end of the war, perpetrators were rewarded with top political positions, they ply the streets of Liberia today as honorable men and women while hundreds of thousands of their victims are called Zogoes (a derogatory term for victims of war and poverty who have turned to criminality). According to a recent survey conducted by the KUWO Academy, 7 out 10 young Liberians aspire to become politicians for two reasons; it is the fastest way to become wealthy and remains the single most popular symbol of success in the post – war country.

What do these young people from Liberia whose future was stolen by war, poverty and abuse, a renowned international lawyer, global business executive, a member of Canadian Parliament, educator and diplomat have in common? More than you might think.

The Initiative

Founded by Leo Nupolu Johnson who fled the Liberian civil war as a child, spent eight years before being resettled to Canada, the KUWO Leadership Academy for young leaders will bring together senior leaders from all sectors to tackle the biggest challenge facing Liberia – restoring hope in the current generation of young leaders (18 – 35) and redeeming the future of the next generation. The initiative offers a variety of formal and informal mentorship opportunities based on community driven solutions, cultural understanding and the development of culturally responsive systems as well as fostering intergenerational dialogue to empower young people. Built on the belief that there is nothing more important to the future of a country than the empowerment of those who will lead it, the KUWO Leadership Academy will provide high impact leadership programs that open doors, minds & opportunities for young, emerging and under-represented leaders in Liberia.

In partnership with the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice at McMaster University, we successfully completed the training of the first cohort of KUWO Fellows comprising of seventeen young people in Liberia. An intensive leadership training lasting six months was utilized where a mixed module of virtual and in – person sessions culminated into the participation of global leaders from Canada, South Africa and the Liberian Diaspora.

Partnering with the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice is particularly important in the case of Liberia as a post – conflict country where the understanding of leadership for a generation of young people impacted by war must be rooted in a multidisciplinary understandng of human rights to create a new vision for their country.