By: Our Staff Writer
A former youth advisor to ex-President Charles Taylor, has returned to his homeland of Liberia to launch his young people venture.
Benjamin Sanvee, who chairs an international youth group called NuVsionPac, said he is using the Obama-style of campaigning to attract young people to the needed strategies that will see them take over their countries’ respective leaderships.
NuVsionPAC is a non-profit and non-partisan political and socially-driven grassroots movement that was established in April 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Beginning with the call to action by President Barack Obama for the people of the world to unite for a common purpose, and seeing the urgency for a 21st century Pan-Africanist movement, Obama said the torch has finally been passed on to this generation of young visionaries.
“Through hard work and perseverance, we can harness our political capital; and turn the page on military coups, civil wars, and wage a more effective war on poverty and corruption. Our membership is drawn from all races, creeds and ethnicities because we are all in this fight together. Our strength comes from the renewed interest that has been generated across Africa for change”, Sanvee said.
Sanvee said that he got his inspiration after he served as a youth volunteer on the ‘Obama for President’ campaign in the US during that country’s presidential election. Sanvee said that the impact that young people had on Obama’s campaign was made known through the fact that young people of the world can do extra-ordinary things when they come together to solve major problems.
Sanvee explained following his experience with the Obama’s team and being inspired, he thought to himself that there was a need to extend and transfer such an ideology to Africa.
“This is not necessarily to elect a president, but a youth-oriented movement that would organize young people that will engage their political and other leaders”, he said. He continued by adding that the organization uses community-based approaches for young people to see themselves as being ‘somebody else’.
The former youth advisor said it is inevitable that young people will one day take over the leadership of Liberia and at such they need to learn to not repeat the mistakes made by past leaderships.
Sanvee became national youth advisor at the age of 17 under the then National Patriotic Party (NPP)-led government of former President Taylor after he delivered what was described as one of the most inspirational speeches at a National Conference on the Future of Liberia in 1998—a position he served for one year prior to his departure to the US where he pursued his academic studies with a BA degree in Political Science from the University of North Carolina.
The young Liberian activist who is in Liberia to ensure that he spreads the message said it is about time that young Liberians re-direct the kind of strength and energy that they used in the destruction of the country during the civil war to a stronger spirit of re-building the nation.
“When we turn the energy that we used to destroy this nation around and re-direct that, we’ll have a Liberia of our dream”, he said.
The visiting Chairman’s tour will see him setting up a West African sub-regional office in Liberia and sub-regional headquarter in Mozambique to cater to the Southern part of Africa while trying to identify other African countries for the possible constructions of other sub-regional offices .
In outlining some of the organization’s achievements, Sanvee said his youth organization was very successful in leading an awareness campaign against the Guinean violence that subsequently led to that country’s military junta receiving thousands of emails and calls condemning the turmoil.
Bringing the G-20 Summit to Africa is one major achievement the youth group is looking toward to achieve, he disclosed.
Sanvee continued, “We have this campaign when we want to bring the G-20 Summit to Africa because they most often discuss issues affecting Africa and we told them that if they want to achieve that, they must bring the Summit to Africa."
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