NEPI is a registered charitable nonprofit organization with a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status (EIN # 81-3844173) under the State of New York since 2016. All donations are tax-deductible
OUR VISION
A society free from youth crime and violence.
A world where the lives of high core street youths are transformed from crime, and violence and are socially and economically empowered into peaceful and inclusive societies.
A world where the lives of high core street youths are transformed from crime, and violence and are socially and economically empowered into peaceful and inclusive societies.
Our Mission
Create Safe Communities for Everyone.
We constantly search for more effective solutions, to crime and violence while sharing our knowledge and expertise with the world. We push for long-term change. We will strive until we find solutions to youth crime, and violence and contribute to reducing extreme poverty, in societies across the world.
We constantly search for more effective solutions, to crime and violence while sharing our knowledge and expertise with the world. We push for long-term change. We will strive until we find solutions to youth crime, and violence and contribute to reducing extreme poverty, in societies across the world.
The History of NEPI
NEPI was established by Klubosumo Johnson Borh and two other colleagues in response to the 14-year civil war in Liberia that conscripted thousands of youths as combatants. Since its inception, the Network for Empowerment & Progressive Initiative (NEPI) has been providing a highly effective, evidence-based program to hard-core street youth with the goal of mainstreaming them back into society.
History of the STYL Program
With two colleagues (Morlee Gugu Zawoo, Sr. and Nelson B. George), I developed the Sustainable Transformation of Youth in Liberia (STYL) program that combines an 8-week program with group Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and cash transfer to rehabilitate hardcore young men, and create safe communities for everyone.
The precursor to STYL was first developed in 2000 and it evolved over the course of nine years. The program has been adapted to particular populations (e.g., Former fighters, and war-affected youth) and also includes our own lessons and learning. We have conducted several versions of the STYL program. The program represented here has been specifically adapted to an urban street youth population.
The precursor to STYL was first developed in 2000 and it evolved over the course of nine years. The program has been adapted to particular populations (e.g., Former fighters, and war-affected youth) and also includes our own lessons and learning. We have conducted several versions of the STYL program. The program represented here has been specifically adapted to an urban street youth population.
The STYL Program
The Sustainable Transformation of Youth in Liberia (STYL) program seeks to provide young men with the highest risk of engaging in violence and crime with an 8-week behavior change and cash transfer intervention that bolsters their cognitive and social skills, readying them to start a business or enter the workforce and equipping them to reach their goals.
With the STYL model, we find and enroll hardcore street youth in the STYL program; provide an 8-week program with group CBT; conduct one-on-one counseling; and socially reintegrate youth – exposing them to a series of role models, provide practical assignments and training, improve appearance while visiting supermarkets and banks; and provide youth with a $200 surprise cash transfer upon completion.
With the STYL model, we find and enroll hardcore street youth in the STYL program; provide an 8-week program with group CBT; conduct one-on-one counseling; and socially reintegrate youth – exposing them to a series of role models, provide practical assignments and training, improve appearance while visiting supermarkets and banks; and provide youth with a $200 surprise cash transfer upon completion.
- CBT helps young men become more forward-looking, planful, and self-controlled,
- With a group of 20 young men in a session
- We offer 3–4 hours a day, 3 times a week of service to youth,
- Conduct individual counseling and follow-up on alternate days,
- Each session is led by 2 NEPI facilitators
- The program provides no compensation except lunch
Our Board of Advisors
Bridget Konadu Gyamfi Otu Program Director
Big Win Philanthropy Mobile: +44 786 730 9905 Tel: +44 203 141 7109 bridget.gyamfi@bigwin.org; bridegh@gmail.com Bridget Konadu Gyamfi Otu is an accomplished development professional with extensive experience in education policy, research, and project management across public, private, and charity sectors. She is passionate about supporting governments who deliver transformational agendas for their countries through Human Capital Development efforts. With over 15 years of programming experience acquired from working both globally and regionally, she is passionate about exploring pathways to scaling proven external interventions within government, leading, and supervising disparate teams, supporting the implementation of impactful interventions in the global south, and enhancing skills acquisition among young people.
With a focus on education policy and improvement in learning outcomes, Bridget has provided advisory services to governments, philanthropies, foundations, NGOs, and multilateral organizations. Over her career, she has led strategic engagements within government and private sectors and has promoted an agenda of evidence-led policy decisions. With years of experience in research and evaluations, she’s worked with donors, governments, and key policymakers to co-create evidence whilst providing technical assistance to partner organizations working on scaling-up efforts within government systems. Prior to joining Big Win Philanthropy, Bridget worked as IPA Ghana’s Senior Policy and Implementation Manager and led the organization's policy engagement within the education sector. She held the position of Head of Programs at the British Council, with a portfolio that had oversight on various projects across basic and higher education, scholarship management, youth employability, and strategic partnerships. Bridget holds an MSc in Education for Sustainability from London South Bank University, and a BSc in Business Administration (Finance) from the University of Ghana, Legon. |
Rev. Bartholomew B. Colley (Atty.)Former Commissioner & Acting Chair,
Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR - Liberia) +231886551520 bbcolley1961@gmail.com Rev. Bartholomew B. Colley is a Lawyer who served on the Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR) in Liberia as a Commissioner and Acting Chairperson. The commission was established in 2005 by an Act of the Legislature with the statutory mandate to protect and promote human rights in accordance with the Liberian Constitution and relevant legislation, including the international treaties and conventions to which Liberia is a party. In Liberia, BB Colley is a household name when it comes to peacebuilding. His peacebuilding practices cover a wide range of issues including but not limited to, civil society strengthening, trauma recovery, psychosocial support, social reconciliation, peace, and conflict transformation. He is an Instructor at the Kofi Anna Institute for Conflict Transformation, University of Liberia. He coordinated the National Network Liberia Chapter of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding and coordinated the Lutheran Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program in Liberia among others.
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Our Board of Directors
Julian JamisonJ-PAL Affiliated Professor
Professor of Economics University of Exeter Mobile: +44 (0) 1392 722256 j.jamison@exeter.ac.uk Julian is a professor of economics and the Director of Economics Research at the University of Exeter Business School. Julian’s research focuses on the interaction between individual preferences, decisions, and well-being, and on institutional policies, including explicit welfare tradeoffs. He uses a wide range of methodological approaches, including mathematical theory, lab and field experiments, formal rhetoric, surveys, and large administrative data analytics. Much of his work has taken place in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on health and financial behavior.
Julian has served as a fellow and/or visiting faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health; University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine; University of Southern California’s Psychology Department; California Institute of Technology’s Social Science Department; HEC Paris; Yale University’s Economics Department; and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He spent nine years in the public sector working in the United States government and at the World Bank before returning to academia to join the University of Exeter in 2018. Julian holds a Ph.D. in game theory from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BSc and MS degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. |
Margaret Sheridan, PhD.Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Mobile: (919) 445-6945 Sheridan.margaret@unc.edu; sheridan.margaret@gmail.com http://circlelab.ucn.edu/ linkedin.com/in/margaret-sheridan-7862464 Margaret Sheridan is an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the director of the Child Imaging Research on Cognition and Life Experiences Lab (CIRCLE Lab). Margaret’s research examines typical and atypical neurodevelopment of the prefrontal cortex and related systems supporting the development of executive function across ages. In particular, within the CIRCLE lab, we examine how early life experiences ranging from maltreatment to poverty or institutionalization impact neural development leading to risk for externalizing psychopathology. Our work has demonstrated that exposure to a variety of early-life adversities are related to deficits in the function of the prefrontal cortex and that different exposures may impact neural development in specific ways. In particular exposures to threat or violence may impact neural development and thus risk for externalizing psychopathology differently than exposures characterized by a lack of social interaction, cognitive enrichment, and complex linguistic experience. The CIRCLE lab uses multiple neuroimaging methods (e.g., EEG/ERP, fMRI, structural MRI) and multiple behavioral methods (e.g., cognitive testing, structured clinical interview, and in-home observation) to achieve these goals.
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CHRISTOPHER BLATTMANProfessor, University of Chicago
Harris School of Public Policy +15102076352 blattman@gmail.com; blattman@uchicago.edu Chris is an economist and political scientist who studies global conflict, crime, and poverty. The Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago, in the Harris School of Public Policy and The Pearson Institute. He co-lead the university’s Development Economics Center and the International Policy & Development program at the Harris School. He co-lead the Crime & Violence Initiative for MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) as well as the Peace and Recovery Program for the research NGO Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). He is a Research Affiliate at UChicago’s Crime and Inclusive Economy Labs. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Chris book Why We Fight was recommended as a best book by the FT, LA Times, WSJ, Washington Post, Economist & Amazon |
Heidi McAnnally-LinzDeputy Director,
Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies +1 (203) 974-2976 heidi.linz@yale.edu Heidi McAnnally-Linz is a global organizations leader and strategist with expertise in moving evidence-to-impact at scale, building teams and coalitions, and mobilizing resources. She is currently the Deputy Director of Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and previously spent a decade at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), most recently as Director of Policy & External Relations. In that role, she helped develop overall organizational strategy and built and led a large team of evidence-to-impact specialists across 12 countries. Heidi has led several small nonprofits and was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, working with indigenous groups throughout Latin America. She has also led coalitions scaling up programs informed by research across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, including serving as the NORM Scaling Advisor. She serves on several boards and holds an MPA in International Policy and Management from NYU and a BA in Political Science from Haverford College.
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Dan McCormick
Dan McCormick is the founder of Towards Kindness, an organization that promotes compassion, empathy, and other prosocial behaviors. Dan brings 25 years of experience in the tech industry, building, scaling, and growing startups. He was the CTO of the stock photo company Shutterstock, and co-founded an e-commerce, search company, Constructor.io, that powers some of the world's largest e-commerce websites. He has extensive experience in building and managing large, effective teams, and growing organizations from the idea phase to full, viable enterprises.
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William F. SaaLiberia Specialist/Resource Person
Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) +231 88 698-3056; +1 (857) 701-2399 williamsaa2002@yahoo.co.uk; billsaa@yahoo.com Since 2017, William is working as Liberia Specialist/Resource person for the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA). The FBA is the Swedish government agency for peace, security and development, and has the overall mission to support international peace and crisis management operations. In this regard, William's role is on strengthening capacities and participation of young people in Liberia's 15 counties, who are playing active leadership role as peace leaders in conflict prevention and peace building in their respective communities and counties all over Liberia.
William’s consultation history is varied and covers a range of issues from professional peacebuilding practices, community building and civil society strengthening; sustainable forest management and governance; conflict mediation and transformation; trauma recovery, and social reconciliation. For at least twenty-five (25) years, William is working as a practitioner in psychosocial support, peacebuilding, and conflict engagement in West Africa and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia, and the USA. During the period of Liberia’s brutal civil war from 1989–2003, and in the post-war period, William (himself a direct victim) has contributed extensively to community building ranging from war trauma healing, social reconciliation, community mediation, and conflict transformation in several communities all over Liberia and neighboring countries of Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ghana. During this time, his work has included government officials, security forces, former combatants/child soldiers, refugees, and other war-affected populations. Now, William is accompanying peacebuilding, psychosocial, and conflict transformation actors, supporting them in capacity building and advising. He is a recipient of the coveted ‘Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Citizenship Award by the United States Embassy in Liberia, for outstanding contribution to promoting social change and the ideals of Dr. King even in trying times. |
Jeannie AnnaChief Research and Innovation Officer,
The International Rescue Committee (International Rescue Committee) +1 (812) 272-6384 jeannie.annan@rescue.org Jeannie Anna is the Chief Research and Innovation Officer for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid organization and global leader in emergency relief, recovery and post-conflict development. She co-founded and lead the Airbel Impact Lab where she design, test and scale solutions with and for people affected by conflict and disaster in more than 30 countries. The program aims to improve humanitarian policy and practice to have greater impact for more people. See Airbel’s full portfolio here. Her own research focuses on developing and testing economic, behavioral, and mental health interventions to prevent violence and to mitigate its psychological and social consequences on women and children. She is a psychologist and started her career running education and psychosocial programming in Kosovo, northern Uganda and South Sudan. She also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and a research affiliate at Innovations for Poverty Action. Previously, She was a Visiting Scientist at Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health and a Postdoctoral Fellow at both Yale University and NYU.
Jeannie Annan – Chief Research and Innovation Officer, International Rescue Committee |
Henk-Jan BrinkmanPermanent Observer,
International Development Law, Organization of the UN +1 (212) 963-0936 (office); +1 (917) 288-6610 (mobile) hjbrinkman@idlo.int linkedin.com/in/henk-jan-brinkman-478a61b Henk-Jan Brinkman has been chief of the Peacebuilding Strategy and Partnerships Branch of the Peacebuilding Support Office in the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs since 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, he was, subsequently, chief Economic Analysis and chief Food Security Policy and Markets in the Office of the Executive Director of the World Food Programme in Rome, Italy, and Senior Adviser for Economic Policy in the World Food Programme, based in New York. From 2001 to 2006 he advised United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette on economic, social, and environmental issues as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Between 1989 and 2001, he was in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, where, inter alia, he contributed to the World Economic and Social Survey.
He co-chaired the Working Group on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding indicators of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in 2012-2013 and has been a member or (co-)chair of several working groups and advisory boards within and outside the UN. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City. He has written on such topics as the peace and justice in the post-2015 development agenda, socio-economic factors behind violent conflicts, the impact of high food prices on nutritional status, economic adjustment in Africa, multilateral negotiations, and human stature as a measure of the standard of living. He is the lead author of WFP’s World Hunger Series – Hunger and Markets (Earthscan, 2009) and the author of Explaining Prices in the Global Economy: A Post-Keynesian Model (Edward Elgar, 1999). He holds Dutch citizenship. |
Our Team
Klubosumo Johnson Borh, BSc, MSc. – SEA/MFPChief Executive Officer – NEPI
+1 715-977-1020 borhjonson@yahoo.com Klubosumo Johnson Borh is a Rainer Arnhold Fellow of Social Entrepreneur/Social Innovator, a Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. He is a Rotary International Global Vocational Trainer. A social and development worker, a reintegration, psychosocial and youth development specialist. He uses field experience to develop rigorous social and development programs and projects that address former child soldiers’ reintegration, hard-risk youth violence and organize crime, extreme poverty in developing countries. He influences public policy and high impact program design for scale-up
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Training Team
Where We Work
We work with communities like these where youth crime and violence are mostly concentrated. With rising thefts in city corners, high rate of crime and violence still prevalent, criminal networks in place and very visible. Armed robbery, pickpocketing, con artistry, drug selling and using the rise.
Where we work is marked with the GREEN location icon below - Liberia
Where we intend to scale STYL are marked with RED location icons below - Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.
Contact NEPI
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Contact
Klubosumo Johnson Borh (Chief Executive Officer) Phone (715) 977-1020 / +231 88 081 7428 / +231 77 598 2615 Address Benson Street, 1000 Monrovia, 10 Liberia Mail - 2085 Tiebout Avenue, Apt 1 - New York, NY 10457 nepilib@yahoo.com; borhjonson@yahoo.com; or complete the form |