My name is Mohamed Sidibay, a native of Sierra Leone, a small, beautiful country located on the West coast of Africa. As a child, I never had a normal upbringing; my childhood was forcefully taken away from me by the very adult who once said "we are the future leaders of tomorrow". The adults that took my childhood away from me and many others created a different future for other child soldiers and me. They gave me a gun instead of a pen, they told me to do drugs instead of advising me to stay away from them, and they sent me out to kill or be killed instead of sending me to school. At the age of six, I had already seen so many people killed for reasons unknown to many others and me at the time. I had taken so many drugs, killed so many people that I became what I had once dreaded not to be; A KILLER, A DRUG ADDICT and A GANGSTER. I became all those things not by choice but by choice-less choice. I felt like I had no soul, and every day I cried inside for things that I did to people against my wish, and sometimes I wished that life was different. I wish that I could have at least enjoyed my childhood and not have lived the life that no child should ever be allowed to live.
After the war when I thought things were supposed to get better, they got even worse, worse than I could ever imagine.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
-John Lennon

The forces of evil conspired to crumble what notions I had of the different facets of life.
It was soon after the fighting that things began slowly coming back to what you could call normal. In the light of all that death and fighting, there seemed to be resurgence of life and a temporary return to peace. Still, that was all on the outside. All that I should’ve struggled with at the outbreak of the war was catching up to me, and boy did it hit me hard. Because of procrastination, these mixed feelings, for so long bottled up, came out as none other than anger.
I was angry. This type of anger is felt by a few, and faked by many. This was full-fledged anger. Every second of my day was spent thinking about just how mad I was. How could my parents be taken away from me? How could the people in my community simply let this happen? This anger was not only directed inwards, because to some degree I blamed myself in the absence of satisfying rationalisation, but also outwards, at the adult figures who I trusted but now felt betrayed by. The adults around me further angered me by not believing in me. When they should have shown me support, they let me down. They believed that I could make nothing out of my situation when I believed that I could make something. Eventually this anger became too much on my psyche. It was draining and it strained my mental and physical capacities. I gave up on being angry because of how much energy it took out of me: it became too much. Instead of listening to them, I set out to prove them. Out of nothing, I could make something. Then I had the belief that there is no reserve destiny, and that one creates their own destiny; what they want it to be and not what it should have been. My community created a destiny for me, a destiny that predicts nothing but misery, but that was the destiny that they created - not mine.
When done with anger, I focused on more positive things. And as fast as I had been forced to mature, I focused, realizing a dream. In my mind, the equation was simple. Should the effort needed be applied, the rewards would astonish.
Fortunately, I found an outlet for my dream in the vision already set in motion by iEARN. It was an organization that took care of me and kept me off the streets. As a young child, it made me believe that I could make my situation better. With them I worked on various projects, attending conferences where I would share my experience with youth from around the world in an effort to increase awareness. Along with the WH Day Elementary School, I was able to increase awareness and in the process, lay down the foundation for change so that other children won't have to suffer like I did.
With iEARN and WH Day Elementary School, “The Dream Team” my dream—our dream—is becoming a reality. My dream, as it played out in my head, was but a dream. But now that the vision is shared, it is a realization.