NMH Welcomes Advocate for African Children

NMH Welcomes Advocate
for African Children

MOUNT HERMON, MA—Social justice advocate Kimmie Weeks will be the State of the World Speaker at Northfield Mount Hermon School January 22 at 6:45 pm in the Rhodes Room of Beveridge Hall.

Weeks, a graduate of the class of 2001, was forced to leave Liberia when he was an adolescent after the government of former President Charles Taylor tried to assassinate him. From the age of 10, Weeks had been working to end the country’s practice of using child soldiers to fight a civil war.

Weeks came to NMH, and subsequently graduated from Amherst College. He won a Golden BR!CK award (called the “Oscar of youth service awards by CNN) last April for his work with Youth Action International, which he founded. The group works to help women and children in war-torn regions of Africa. Most recently, the new Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, named Weeks a Knight Grand Commander, the country’s highest honor.

This year, the BBC released the documentary “Kimmie Weeks: Back to the Front,” which is now airing in the UK. Weeks is also featured in the new book Peace in Our Lifetime as an international peacemaker, along with Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Weeks’ address is free and open to the public. For directions to NMH, call 413-498-3000 or visit www.nmhschool.org.

Contact: Kate Snyder, 413-498-3357 or ksnyder@nmhschool.org.

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