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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“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
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—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)