Strongheart Fellowship program

There are still an estimated 75,213 refugees living outside Liberia’s borders including approximately 40,000 living in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. Conditions in the camp which is in the process of being shut down are extremely difficult – formal education is practically nonexistent and many aid organizations have left, leaving refugees without access to basic necessities such as food and clean drinking water. The hardest hit are the young orphaned refugees who do not have anyone to care for them.

The Strongheart Fellowship will renovate a home and learning center in Robertsport, Liberia for returning youth who are currently living in the Buduburam camp. Strongheart Fellowship has established a groundbreaking social-entrepreneurship program that helps resilient young people from extremely challenging circumstances, like Lovetta Conto and the Freemans, develop into compassionate, innovative leaders.

Collaborating with Strongheart Fellowship to establish a suitable home will enable an initial fourteen young refugees currently living in Buduburam to return to their homeland and live together in a safe environment that nurtures familial bonds and encourages them to mature into their full potential. They will become members of Liberia’s first Fellowship program and be taught Strongheart’s uniquely crafted curriculum that encompasses a mind, body and sprit approach where practical life skills are integrated with basic education and innovative business and leadership training. Fellows will be inspired to become social entrepreneurs, conscientious adults and creative agents of change*.

Youth as well as adults living near Strongheart House will also be invited to participate in workshops and seminars that offer a roadmap to promote peace and bring prosperity to their country.

Strongheart House will grow to become a hub for many young refugees wishing to return home and develop their entrepreneurial spirit. To achieve this, we must first create a safe and comfortable place for the refugee children. You can help spearhead these efforts in fostering Liberia’s next generation of problem-solvers to rebuild their country.

Meet Lovetta Conto

Separated from her mother and country at the age of four during the Liberian conflict, Lovetta Conto fled to Ghana with her father, where she lived for nine years with various families in refugee camps. She often went hungry or was sometimes beaten for trying to attend school without shoes or proper clothing. But her remarkable spirit persevered and she eventually found her way into working with a team of American volunteers to build a school for unaccompanied minors, and further distinguished herself by advocating for special education for sight-impaired children.

At age 14, Lovetta became the first Liberian Strongheart Fellow and after intensive emotional healing and learning, at 15 she created a jewelry line by transforming hundreds of spent bullet casings, left on the streets of Liberia after the war, into beautifully symbolic jewelry representing the hope of a new life after tragedy. Learn more about Lovetta and her jewelry line, AKAWELLE.

http://www.akawelle.com/

Lovetta looks forward to living at Strongheart House with her friends the Freemans.

Meet Emmanuel Freeman

The Freeman children are Lovetta’s friends who still live in the Buduburam refugee camp. They are a family of six orphans who have stayed together no matter what came against them. Despite the adversities in the refugee camp, the Freemans started their own videogame business which helped them survive, yet they are eager to return to Liberia and join Lovetta as Strongheart Fellows.

Lovetta writes: “We’ll live there with house parents who are smart, loving and kind…It wasn’t easy to trust life when I first left the refugee camp – so I know what the Freemans will go through when they finally leave. They’ll need a good, beautiful, safe place to heal, learn and go for their dreams. For me and the Freemans, it will be the first real house we’ve ever had.”