Student Raises Awareness, Funds to Help Liberia

Henrique Wilson

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He is a U.S. citizen who has lived in Lowell since 1989 but when he talks about Liberia he calls it home. 

Henrique Wilson, who earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at UML and will graduate with a master’s degree from the Regional Economic and Social Development program in June, has put his feelings for his native country into action by helping the republic recover from a 14-year civil war.

When current president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was running for office in 2005, Wilson sent her a document outlining a process for rehabilitating ex-combatants – the civil war had ended just two years earlier – into peacetime Liberia.

“I didn’t expect her to read it, but she did,” Wilson says.  When Sirleaf was elected, Wilson’s ideas were incorporated into the new national Commission for Demobilization, Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration.

He went to Liberia this spring to “see how I could help,” he says. Wilson learned that Commission funding, from the European Union and the U.S. Agency for International Development, was running out. His assessment suggested that there were 23,000 ex-combatants yet to receive the education and training that would prepare them to support themselves in a peace-time economy.

“You cannot reintegrate someone who has spent 14 years fighting in only one year,” he points out. “Unless we can educate all of Liberia’s ex-combatants, I believe things will fall apart. The peace is very fragile.”

He made the case for continuing the Commission’s work when he had a chance to meet with President Sirleaf.  By executive order, she continued the Commission. She also offered Wilson a role in running it. But she could not fund the effort.

“I want to help. I am willing to serve,” says Wilson, “but I want a chance to succeed. We need money to succeed.”

So, Wilson is conducting his own fund- and awareness-raising campaign, since he has observed that “Americans have pretty much no knowledge of Africa.” He is speaking at various public forums in the hopes of raising $2 million, the amount he estimates is required to complete the rehabilitation and reintegration process for ex-combatants.

Awareness-raising includes screening a documentary he became aware of while he was in Liberia. The documentary, which outlines the socially and economically devastating history of Firestone Rubber Co. in Liberia, will be shown at 6 p.m. on May 3 in Prof. Robert Forrant’s Developing Economies class.  The Firestone situation was the topic of his master’s thesis.

Wilson’s wide-ranging talents are evident in his options for the immediate future. He has applied for a one-year grant that would support his work in Liberia. If that does not pan out, he may continue his education, getting a Ph.D. in business management because “that is what Liberia needs.” 

“All the skills I have learned came from UMass Lowell,” says Wilson. “This is a very good school. I am so grateful for all I have learned, and all I have received.”