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My First Day at the Peace Club

Some leaders within my community established two clubs, the Kids Writing Club and the Kids Peace Club on January 29, 2022. These clubs were instituted to support and promote creative ideas, writing skills and peace advocacy skills. I participated in both clubs, but I was more interested in the Peace club. You might be wondering why I was more interested in the peace club; this is because, I’ve dreamt of becoming a peace advocate. My country, Liberia, suffered fourteen years of civil crisis, and it is my desire to ensure that such tragedy never repeats in the History of Liberia. My first day at the Peace Club was a total embarrassment because I wrecked the whole room. I can be very clumsy sometimes and this day was the worst. There were some beautiful paintings up on the shelf that attracted my attention. The moment I reached out to take one of the paintings off the shelf to get a closer look, the entire shelf came crumbling down along with everything on it. The buckets of flowers had water in them, and it spilled, wetting the entire room. I felt like a total freak and stayed away from Peace Club for two weeks. After two weeks I returned to the Peace Club meeting still reflecting on my display of clumsiness. I sat all the way at the back of the room to avoid everyone. As the session began, everyone was sharing ideas and stories and I sat in the corner at the back, very mute. Mr. Gote, the coordinator of the Peace Club, noticed how quiet I was and got concerned. He began to narrate a story about a girl named Vero and how she gave up on her dreams because she was shy and was worried about what others thought about her. At the end of the story, I realized that he was talking about me and suddenly, my shyness and feeling of embarrassment went away. Mr. Gote called me up to share with the club and when I began to speak, I felt very confident, and everyone was amazed at all the good ideas I had to share. After the meeting Mr. Gote asked me why I was so quiet for most parts of the meeting, and I explained what had happened. He told me that everyone has had an embarrassing moment before and that I should not allow such moments to shake my confidence. I learned such a valuable lesson that day and I owe it all to the leaders of my community for organizing these clubs.

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Ethel Harris is a 15-year-old student at the Cuttington Campus School in Liberia