Child Solider

Today I realized that I live with a former child solider. As ignorant as it is, I had this weird idea that somehow one would look different, that I would be able to tell. But he fits in perfectly with all of the other boys living in the house. He is kind, well mannered and ambitious. He is starting college next semester. I had no idea.

I spent this week reading up on the background of Golden Kids News and listening to a couple past broadcasts. The format of the program is that children between the ages of about 6-17 are trained as journalists and go around the country interviewing kids, parents, government officials, NGOs, and other stakeholders interested in children’s issues. Frances told me that one of the kids in the house was actually one of the very first reporters of Golden Kids News when it began in 2003 and that I should talk to him. Tonight he told me all about the war and how he was recruited into the junta and served for the last two years of the war. After disarmament and demobilization, he was sent to a center where he stayed until the ex-combatants were to be sent back to their villages. After being in the center for a few months, he received a letter from Search asking if he would help to begin a new radio program, Golden Kids News. It changed his life. It gave him a constructive way to utilize the leadership skills he had gained as a child solder and it even helped him reconnect with his parents. His parents heard his voice on the radio and came looking for him. He said that this also happened to many other cub reporters who thought their parents were dead. He believes that Golden Kids News has greatly impacted the way children are treated in Sierra Leone, and I am incredibly excited to begin measuring part of that impact in the next coming weeks.