Two O Ambassadors, Garry Norman and Michel Chickwanine, spoke to the juniors and seniors at Americus-Sumter High School Friday about the challenges facing youth around the world. The “O” in O Ambassadors stands for Oprah.

Americus-Sumter High is one out of 1,000 schools across the nation to be selected for this program.

Norman and Chickwanine challenged the students to think critically about their world and the role they can take in making it a better place.

With a focus on the Millennium Development Goals, the O Ambassadors shared stories from around the world to help bring these global issues to life. The two highlighted examples of how young people have been transformed, when they channeled their talents toward being an active part of the solution.

Chickwanine, 19, told the audience that he was threatened and forced to be a child soldier in his native country of the Democratic Republic of Congo, before he was forced at age 11 to leave his country as a refugee.

He said he saw many terrors as a child soldier, like people having their hands and feet chopped off. Norman said many wars in Africa are fought because of minerals that are prized in industrialized countries.

Norman said these African countries war with each other over the minerals. Now living in Canada, Chickwanine graduated this year from St. Patrick’s High School, where he won the award for supporting multi-culturalism. He also won The Spirit of the Capital Youth Award for Personal Courage.

Norman’s work has impacted hundreds of thousands of young people since he joined Free The Children in 2004, acting as a key facilitator for international trips and youth empowerment initiatives. During the last school year alone, he spoke to more than 40,000 young people on the “We Generation” tour, according to his biography.