History
According to their website, YAI was started and inspired by acclaimed youth activist Kimmie Weeks, a survivor of the First Liberian Civil War. At age nine, after nearly being buried alive as a result of disease, hunger and suffering, Weeks pledged to spend his life helping children. At age 16, in 1998 Weeks successfully headed Liberia’s Children’s Disarmament Campaign, an effort to lobby the disarmament of approximately 20,000 Liberian child soldiers. Two years later, his work led then Liberian President Charles Taylor and his government to attempt to have Weeks assassinated. As a result, Kimmie was forced to flee to the United States where he was granted political asylum )
Once he arrived in the United States, Kimmie Weeks enrolled and completed his final year of high school at Glasgow High School in Newark, Delaware. He then enrolled at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, MA where he completed a post graduate program. In 2001, Weeks enrolled at Amherst College in Massachusetts and received a BA in Political Science and History in 2005. While at Amherst College, Weeks founded Youth Action International.
YAI has developed an extensive network of volunteers around the U.S. and Canada. YAI works for the survival, protection, and development of children and women in Africa through fundraising, education, and advocacy.
YAI is a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Massachusetts and is tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. YAI is governed by an independent, non-salaried board of directors
Read more about this topic: Youth Action International
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“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
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“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
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