Child Soldier Project Andrew Greene Jr. is national coordinator for iEARN Sierra Leone and co-founder of childsoldiers.org, a place where the youth of Sierra Leone can bear witness to the issue of the Child Soldier as they see it impacting their lives and that of their families, communites and country. Below is an article written by Andrew for the Digital Opportunity Web site.

iEARN Sierra Leone: Youth Witnessing From The Front Lines Andrew Greene Jr., iEARN Sierra Leone and Childsoldiers.org August 26, 2002

iEARN Sierra Leone, founded in 1999, is a member of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), a non-profit global network that enables young people to use the Internet and other new technologies to engage in collaborative educational projects. In its brief three-year history, iEARN Sierra Leone has made significant strides, addressing the educational needs of young people both in Sierra Leone and around the world with its special focus on student tele-collaboration.

The core activity of iEARN Sierra Leone is the participation of young people and their teachers sharing their talents over the Internet. They create and participate it online projects covering a range of issues, including peace, human rights, conflict resolution and sustainable development. Participating in iEARN activities is a challenge here in Sierra Leone -- for example, more often than not, we have to access Internet cafes at the emporium of the city. This exercise is painstaking as we often must hire a bus to get access to the Internet. Other times, we have to walk when we can't hire a bus. When we finally arrive at the Internet café, the place is often filled and we have to linger in a long queue for hours, waiting for a computer. This has been going on for the last three years. The inaccessibility of the Internet has been the main limiting factor in our work. Through our association with iEARN USA and iEARN Canada, iEARN Sierra Leone has received great moral support as well as some financial support. Thanks to the help of iEARN USA's Ed Gragert, we were able to get in touch with a charitable group, Computer Aid International, that has recently donated 10 recycled computers for a local community access center. Our major challenge now is to get these computers connected to the Internet on a regular basis and have our youths participate in the sharing of ideas with peers around the world. This youth community access center would serve as the principal information window to the world for our community's war-affected youths and underprivileged children. It would help them participate in online educational activities, interact with other children around the world, and acquire the vast array of ICT skills that to date have been lacking in developing countries like Sierra Leone.

Despite the odds against us, iEARN Sierra Leone has made a number of significant accomplishments. For the past three years, we have enabled over 200 youths and students affected by war to develop ICT skills. Our ongoing tele-collaborative project, childsoldiers.org, is a multimedia showcase of essays, images and music that tells of the human toll of our civil war -- a showcase all created by students and youth. This project has touched the hearts of many people. The UN's office of displaced persons is considering it as a potential model for use in four additional parts of the world that have been affected by war: Uganda, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Palestine. This focus on the human rights of children used in armed conflict was the subject of national broadcast in Canada, and SchoolNet Canada is working to make the project fit into the nation's schools and communities.

iEARN Sierra Leone believes that through the use of tele-collaboration, war-affected children will be better able to communicate their thoughts with their peers -- and through their first hand experiences in telling their stories, create awareness about the issue of child soldiers on a global level. Additionally, we believe that children are the best advocates for their peers -- if only they can grow within a safe, secure environment. Whilst bearing witness to other children, through the incredible global learning network that is iEARN, tele-collaboration with other children across the globe will help to bring the issue to the full glare of the world. The website childsoldiers.org will thus become a meeting point, a forum for these youth. Although the stories shared on childsoldiers.org are agonizing, they are true and authentic, and not tainted by the lens of mass media journalism. Through their compelling artwork, drawings and music, our youth are bringing the seriousness of the issue to the international community through the Internet. As a volunteer educator in iEARN forced to use limited technologies, I am sufficiently aware that our project has not come close to reaching its fullest impact. Part of the reason is due to the fact that those of us on the ground, who know all too well the impact of the war on these children, lack the technological and financial resources to carry out the campaign to its fullest potential. As volunteers, we work on a shoestring budget and through personal finances. We are proud of our accomplishments so far, but we remain in dire need of financial support to strengthen our programmatic activities, train our youth and give them a voice through the power of the Internet.

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