Youth Education for Life Skills (YES)

SFCG uses a two-pronged outreach and multi-media strategy that engages and provides youth with non-violent problem-solving strategies, as well as informs stakeholders, actors and communities about the benefits of YES and their role as implementation agents.

The outreach component of the programme involves youth focus groups that explore issues and build youth self-esteem and confidence. Town hall meetings introduce and perpetuate community mobilisation; drama performances are also designed to educate youth and communities on current youth issues.

Since the programme began, SFCG has trained 48 community drama groups. It has also provided logistical, technical, and financial support to its drama teams, who then pass their knowledge on to peer drama teams and the greater community. Twelve of the most effective drama teams were selected and are used to introduce and prepare their communities for further implementation of YES activities.

Outreach is extended further through media tools including jingles, spot messages, radio programmes, and soap operas. The outreach programmes focus on subjects pertinent to Liberia's youth including HIV/AIDS education, self-esteem and tolerance. For example, SFCG broadcasts a series of one- to two-minute jingles based on the contents of the training modules used in the YES curriculum. Based on focus group discussions with the YES participants, SFCG features success stories from the YES programme in its regular national media products, Young Citizens and Woman, which focus on the role of youth and women, respectively, in the consolidation of peace in Liberia.

SFCG's scriptwriters weave the issues raised within the YES training modules, as well as the focus group success stories, into the characters and storylines of the soap opera, Today is Not Tomorrow (TNT).

Youth.

Following more than a decade of violent civil conflict under former president Charles Taylor, Liberia held its first democratic elections in November 2005. Leading up to this process, a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force (UNMIL) was established to support the reconstruction and peace process - including the disarmament and demobilisation of ex-combatants. When UNMIL officially concluded disarmament on October 31 2004, 90,000 former combatants had been disarmed and demobilised. The repatriation of refugees from Liberia's neighbouring countries still poses a challenge: To date, some 160,000 displaced people have returned home, leaving around 140,000 in camps.

According to organisers, tensions remain high in many communities as resident populations, including combatants and returnees (once driven out by these combatants), compete for the same limited resources. To advance development and stability in Liberia, SFCH argues, social reconciliation and reintegration are needed, especially among youth, who played an active role in the war and are now faced with finding new livelihoods. Traditionally minimal, ethnic differences, organisers contend, have been manipulated for political gain during the past two decades so that resentment and suspicions still deeply divide Liberia.