Livingston High Student Speaks About Ghana

Editor’s Note: The following article was written by Marilyn Joyce Lehren, the manager of communications for Livingston Public Schools.

By Marilyn Joyce Lehren

On a mission in Ghana, LHS senior Albert Chalom discovered the fishing children, the young boys and girls sold by their parents into slavery in hopes for a better life and education. Despite the fact that many people believe slavery no longer exists, Chalom said, there are about 30 million slaves around the world today.


Those the Harvard-bound Chalom tried to rescue were the children in Ghana working on rickety fishing boats in a manmade lake with trees underwater. Fishing nets often get caught and the children are forced to dive into freezing water to free the nets from branches. Quite often, in the attempt to free the net, the fishing children get caught and drown.


Chalom says there is one particular image of a child that has remained with him, a small boy shrinking in shame as his master ticks off all the boy’s faults – the irony, the name of the boat on which the boy sits, “Dignity.”



This was the talk Chalom shared with his peers at Livingston High School on Wednesday, March 4, during a special program modeled after TED Talks, the popular forum that spreads ideas from a broad spectrum of topics and fields from science to business and global issues.



“Knowing that our high school community is home to so many amazing people with incredible stories of our own, we thought it would be fun to create a homegrown version of the TED Talks conference to celebrate the best that LHS has to offer,” said Kevin Wittmaack, 9-12 English Department Supervisor, who organized the event.



LANCETalks featured 24 intellectually stimulating, concise, and soul-stirring live presentations from both teachers and students. The polished, multimedia presentations were filmed by television production students and LTV with plans to produce video segments to share with the full school community.



Read the full story and see a slide show of photos by clicking HERE.


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