Meet Amina Johnet Watson. The founder of the Youth partnership HUB Liberia, her organization is involved with helping youth-led organizations in Liberia. She is a community service volunteer and the data entry clerk and Motor for vehicles at the MDMC division at the Ministry of Transport.
Decontee: It’s good having you here today.
Amina: Yes, and I want to say thank you for choosing me for this interview.
Decontee: who are you?
Amina name is Amina Johnet Watson, I like to introduce myself as a community service volunteer because most of the work I do is to help the national government in developing my country, and I feel good providing community services to my people. I am also a fellow for the Democracy Impact fellowship program, a 24-week program at the US embassy that is for learning and growing young people professionally.
For years now, I have been into community Service volunteer working with different organizations in different spaces. I have worked as an accountant, logistician, assistant director and the list goes on. It has been exciting for me because that is what I love doing helping people in my society.
Decontee: how long have you been providing community services?
Amina: I started this journey in 2015. The first organization I volunteered with was called the Monrovia Entrepreneurs Network (Men) the organization was into training young men to choose their career paths and building them into entrepreneurs.
Decontee: How did you start your journey as a community service provider?
Amina: When I relate it to the time I was growing up, I wanted to be a journalist. In all of the high schools I went to, I either served as the school press club president or helped in the process of having a press club, when I graduated from high school, I had this passion for doing mass communications but I had this challenge with WAEC that deny me from entering the university at that time, not like now where students can enter a university without passing in WAEC but present it upon graduation. During my time, once a student does not reach the grade point for WAEC you will be denied from entering the university. I had to sit back to do a restitter before entering the university. Since I was not in school, I started to volunteer at my aunt’s office where I grew the passion for volunteering. When I moved to Breweville there was this team in the community carrying out community services and I was serving as the leader on that team providing services for the people of that community, that is how my passion grew to get into community service volunteering. Two years later, I joined the Monrovia Enterperuru network (Men) and my time there was wonderful, we were able to train youth at the US embassy and other places. It has been inspiring for me because over the years it has helped me to know some of the challenges that are among young people in the community. I have sites in spaces where young people shared their disappointment either with the national government or community leaders and also where young people’s brains stomped positive solutions on how to improve their communities by giving their contributions to that community.
Decontee: What are some challenges you faced in the work that you do, and how you came out of those challenges?
Amina: Time is the greatest challenge I face in the work that I do, In Liberia when you run a non-profit organization without having income it becomes difficult for you to grow or to improve the organization. So now, I have to work from a professional space, like now, I am working for the government at the same time working as a community service volunteer. I have noticed that only when there is an initiative before you see me doing it, I am not doing it because I have enough time, but if I had the finances to do it I would be out of Montserradio right now conducting awesomeness on child trafficking and other things in high schools as well. Most of what I do is highly supported by myself and I had to work before I do get money to do anything.
The organization that I have, myself supports all of the initiatives that the organization runs because I don’t have enough funding and there is no time to fully run the organization.
Decontee: How was life growing up as a child?
Amina: I hope this question will not make me cry, as a child my father rejected me and because of that I have not been able to graduate from university, my college education is all on me. My mother is not that educated because my father met her when she was in the 11th grade, but the war disrupted their education and she couldn’t complete high school, when the war ended she had to recover from all of her losses, and my father who had the opportunity to go back to school and work in government institution as higher as being the director of one LRA department got too occupied with his personal life and forgot us. That made me strong enough to stand up for my education since I knew that he was not going to be a help to us, since 2018 till now I have been doing things all by myself and the places where I have worked, their time could not permit me to go to school, but when I got a government job in 2020 it was when I started school and going to work at the same time. Thank God, I am a senior student at the United Methodist University studying Procurement Supplies chain management and I am doing public administration as my minor. My childhood is not something I want to go deep into because I don’t want to bring out some sad moment or memory.
It has been a huge trouble, imagine taking care of yourself and your family and having this big dream that you want to accomplish but you are holding on to it and hoping that you will achieve it one day .
Two days ago I told somebody that I would write my story one day and act it for someone or watch it and get inspired and pick up their broken pieces or keep strong that one day they will achieve their goals.
Decontee: What has been your motivation?
Amina: God has been my greatest motivation because I don’t know what will motivate me out there. I don’t believe that anyone has motivated me, there is no specific motivational quote or mentor that I can relate but it has been God all through. With all of the many times I have fallen waking myself up is done by the Holy Spirit. The relationship that I have with God has kept me going and I know one day things will be better.
Decontee: What are some encouraging words you can give to young people who are joining the community service engagement field?
Amina: I have observed most of them who are coming to the community service activities and I want to encourage them to keep strong. It is exciting to know that young people are involved with helping the community nowadays, starting from their school, community, and the nation at large. Let me say this, nobody will come from anywhere to fix this country if that person is not a Liberian, it is we (Liberians) who can change things for the better. If we want to see limited disadvantaged youth in the streets, limited teenage pregnancy, and limited trash on our streets we have to put in time to help the government to educate people on these things. We are doing well but we need to do more and I encourage others to join us in making Liberia better, as we get more involved five to ten years from now we will have an improved and developed environment.
Decontee: What work do you do at the Ministry of Transport?
Amina: I work as a data entry clerk/ motor vehicle division at the MDMC a department of the Ministry of Transport, which handles the revenue, the Vehicle register, and driver’s license of the transport ministry.
Decontee: How is the youth partnership HUB, your organization?
Amina: The HUB is there and llike said some of the challenges we have is time, to Doing government work and managing the HUB are two different things and so it is draining me, this year was a challenge for my team and me because we never had an effective team to carry out some of the up bring of the organization.
Decontee: When was the Hub established and why are some activities you do there?
Amina: I am the founder and program director of The Youth Partnership Hub Liberia, it is a nonprofit organization for emerging youth-led- organizations.
We have four programs that we celebrate, International Youth Day. International Peace Day, the professional development studies where we work with the organizations and we have the SDG education design for students. We have not implemented this program yet because we are still working on documentation, and this program’s first twenty years will be over by 2029, so we are working on it.
Decontee: Thank you for the time.
Amina: I want to thank you too for the work, this is part of civic engagement as well because if you write my story someone will read it and get inspired. My team and I are grateful for the opportunity.
