“I would put on torn clothes and go to the barracks to interview the child soldiers.”

Jallah was still a student when the Liberian civil war broke out. Driven by his passion for journalism, he and a friend decided pitched an idea to Taking Drums Studio: a news program about children's issues, created, produced, and hosted by young people. "They instantly loved the idea. I hugged my friend. We were so happy: Goldens Kids News was born," he says.

The show was an immediate success. Jallah recruited seven young people from his college. "We used the voices of students to reach out to young combatants. During the conflict, children as young as six years old were recruited. They were given weapons, often drugged. They fought and killed," he explains.

The courage of the Golden Kids had no limits. To capture their interviews, they went as far as disguising themselves as child soldiers, so that the rebel generals wouldn’t notice their presence. "I would put on torn clothes and go to the barracks to interview them. My mother was trying to talk me out of it, but it was vital for me to speak to them, to convince them to leave. They were discouraged; they had no will of their own. Sometimes they were so drugged that we could not get anything from them other than insults”, Jallah recalls.

Only hours after the interviews, Jallah's voice and the voices of the child soldiers echoed throughout Liberia. "The whole country could hear us. Mothers recognized the voices of their children who had disappeared for several years and were able to bring them back home," he explains.

The child soldiers opened up with Jallah. He understood how they felt and their motivations. When he was himself a child, he too had tried to join the rebels. "Every day, I could see all these children my age carrying a gun. You start thinking that when you are armed, people will look at you with fear: that's it, you will be a strong man! I didn't want to kill, but I saw it as a means of survival. I ran away to join them but my mother came to get me and brought me back to reason,” he says. Still today, he tells this story to the many children who walk the streets of Monrovia, hoping that they, too, will choose nonviolence.

Young age didn’t shield the Golden Kids journalists from anger and retaliation. "We provoked the anger of adults. We never hesitated to say it loud and clear: these people recruit children! One day, some of them came to take us. Fortunately, we had been warned. I went to hide at my grandmother's house. My best friend asked us to hide him, too,” Jallah says.

Yesterday’s young reporters have become today’s leaders. Jallah is now the Vice President of the Union of Liberian Journalists. As for the Golden Kids show, it inspired the Talking Drum Studio team in Sierra Leone to create its own version of the program, hosted by former child soldiers.*

Today, Jallah would like to see even more media outlets follow the example of Golden Kids and continue raising awareness of children’s issues. "Radio has the power to enlighten people. In the 90s, we were already addressing the issue of child labor. The government heard us and things changed; children were offered free education. However, since then, the issue has come back in force. Our work is not yet finished."