Kimmie Weeks's Bio

My YES! Jams
2001 World Jam
Jams Micellaneous
2006 World Jam

Org: Youth Action International
Location: New York
Website

Bio:

Kimmie Weeks has worked to alleviate poverty and human suffering in Africa and around the world since he was fourteen. Weeks was born in Liberia, West Africa in 1981. At the young age of nine he came face to face with civil war, human suffering, and death. Weeks can still vividly recall eating roots and wild leaves when his family did not have access to food, drinking infested water when national water supply was shut off, and nearly being buried alive after epidemics had wrecked his emaciated body.

These experiences would have broken the souls of most people. However, they encouraged Weeks to follow a path where he could make a difference and ensure a world where all children had access to food, medicine and shelter. It is a vision that he has pursued ever since.

Over the years, Weeks has formed partnerships and led organizations that have provided education to over 1 million students in West Africa, lobbied the disarmament of over 20,000 child soldiers and provided health care and recreation supplies to children.

Week’s has faced many obstacles in pursuit of his dream. The biggest obstruction that he faced was when the Liberian government attempted to assassinate him for a report he had issued on its involvement in the training of child soldiers. As a result, Weeks was forced to flee Liberia when he was seventeen and has since been granted political asylum in the United States.

Today after graduating from Amherst College Weeks continues on a mission to protect children from war.

"The Jams are model classrooms for activists, and have provided me a new avenue and a new vigor to go out there and work more effectively for change. Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats meeting 30 young people who are not only holding the keys to global change but who are absolute angels. The bonds made at the Jams are truly unbreakable. It’s like seeing a new dawn for young activists."