At Nickel Liberia we intended to carry on all of our major
projects in the villages. It wasn’t easy for us because
there’s no access to roads that work. So we walk three hours and
then we saw the village. Some of my colleagues were going to cry
for the little kids because seeing them naked, and barefoot
and going to farm instead of going to school in the morning.
We saw girls the age of 12 and 13 pregnant. And we said, why is
this happening here? Is this not part of Liberia? We asked the
town chief and the partner chiefs and the adults, what can
we do for your people? And they said, we only need education for
their children. So we said, ok! And they provide 10 acres of
land for Nickel to begin a school for our project. And then
after a few months, we went back there with two hundred bags of
cement. But it took two hours to and from with the cement on our
heads to reach there. So we took more than one month to haul
those cements. So we started a 10 kilometer road, and now we
have gone in 4 kilometers of the 10 kilometer road. And now we
have 7,000 bricks on the project site now. 10 acres of land has
been given to Nickel Liberia. Our mission is to build 15
modern primary and secondary schools within the fifteen
counties of Liberia, only in the rural, rural parts of Liberia.
Where there is no school there is no road. Our mission is to
make sure that the people in the rural, rural parts have access
to quality and equal education as well. Now our first project
is growing in Gran Bassa county. 10 buildings there for one
school. After Gran Bassa, they will move to another county. 10
buildings there for one school, and so on until we are in the 15
counties of Liberia. Basically we have our system of raising
funds. We have boxes, cash boxes there at schools, churches,
business centers and people drop their nickel there each day, and
you know, we have our colleagues who go around and collect those
money, and then we save it. And later on we invest in our
project. In our Liberian palace, when we say nickel, we talk
about 5 Liberian dollars. Yea, 5 Liberian dollars. So we are
saying the power of 5 Liberian dollars. Then we have our rural
project going on in the forest, and we usually sell logs. Why
can’t we transform this log that we throw and saw to get a row,
why can’t we fix and team up to process it into planks and give
it to these children who are sitting on stone? So we decided
to start a project called from stone to chair. And in this we
were able to donate more than 100 chairs to this new public
school. So for this year we want to give 1000 chairs out in three
counties. If every Liberian would just give 5 Liberian
dollars, we can make a difference. We can make a change
with just 5 Liberian dollars. The first time we attended the
Global Leadership Summit was so amazing. And then we listened to
speakers, and these guys explained their stories. From
their stories passed through how many years it took them, their
persistency and thought toward their vision. I got inspired, by
young boy at the Global Summit who said Nickel has to do more!
I said my God, if this little boy knows we have to do more,
then indeed, Nickel Liberia, we have to do more. Until up to the
present, his voice always sounds in my ear that, you have to do
more, you have to do more. The second summit we attended we
came across the vice president of Liberia. Her excellency,
Jewel Taylor, at the Global Summit she also helped to she
gave Nickel a contribution toward our vision as well. So
the Summit is doing a lot. If I’m asking for change, I should
be the first man to begin change. If I’m asking for change
in the education sector, I should be the one. I’m a low
income earner. I earn very low income. My family, there is no
one in government position, and now I can say we want to build
50 more primary schools and secondary schools with in the 15
counties. One school, ten buildings. Then it’s like you
are speaking out of your mind. So I said yes indeed, I’m a mad
man. Because I think there’s something in me. There’s
something inside of me that I can’t really explain in total.
But there’s something deep down that I always telling me yes you
can do it. And though as time passes by I started to build the
courage and until now the courage has been pure. I can
make it. We can build it. We are fired up. We can do it.