{"id":60980,"date":"2013-04-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2013-uri-providence-student-from-war-torn-liberia-achieves-dream-of-college-in-america\/"},"modified":"2013-04-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2013-uri-providence-student-from-war-torn-liberia-achieves-dream-of-college-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/04\/commencement-2013-uri-providence-student-from-war-torn-liberia-achieves-dream-of-college-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2013: 溏心vlog免费B站 Providence student from war-torn Liberia achieves dream of college in America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tProvidence resident to study public policy in graduate school<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2014 April 10, 2013 \u2014 Emmanuel Logan lost his mother on a spring day nearly two decades ago. Logan watched in horror as the rebels dragged Sarah from her house in Liberia for speaking out against the recruitment of child soldiers to fight in the country\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n


\nLogan never saw her again. Six months later, he and his eight siblings discovered that she had been raped in her prison cell and brutally murdered. His life changed in an instant. He had dreamed of becoming a doctor, but now set his sights on advocating for social justice.<\/p>\n


\nThis spring, the 32-year-old Providence resident will graduate with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies with a major in Business Institutions from the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education. He hopes to study public policy at graduate school in the fall, possibly at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Kingston campus.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWith hard work and focus you can achieve anything you want in life,\u201d said Logan. \u201cWhen I came here, I had no phone, no car, no place to live. The only thing that kept me going was hope and faith and the kindness of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nLogan has come a long way from those frightening years when civil war from 1989 to 2005 sparked kidnappings, torture, and gruesome killings, often with a machete. Logan\u2019s mother spoke out against guerilla leader Charles Taylor and his recruitment of Liberian boys to rape and kill. She paid for her courage with her life.<\/p>\n


\nAfter her murder, Logan took up her cause as a youth minister but was threatened and fled the country, first to the Ivory Coast and then to Ghana. His final stop was Providence, where he arrived in 2007 to live with other Liberian refugees. He received political asylum and eventually became a permanent resident.<\/p>\n


\nRight away, he got to work. He found a job as an aide at a group home in Massachusetts for adults with learning disabilities, working his way up to assistant program manager. He routinely puts in 80 hours a week and hasn\u2019t had a vacation in five years.<\/p>\n


\nThree years ago, he decided he wanted more out of life and went back to college. With some credits accumulated as a student at the University of Liberia, he enrolled as a junior at the Providence campus. <\/p>\n


\nHe chose the BIS program, which is designed for people like Logan who want to keep working while earning a bachelor\u2019s degree. He took out college loans to pay tuition. The variety of classes was also appealing \u2013 accounting, marketing, civil rights in America, environmental studies. He\u2019s grateful that he could collaborate with his professors to tailor the program to meet his needs.\t<\/p>\n


\n\t \u201cThis is a young man who in the face of adversity broke down barriers that would have prevented others from moving forward,\u201d said Gayla Gazerro, financial aid and scholarship advisor at the Feinstein Providence campus. \u201cWe can expect great accomplishments from Emmanuel in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAnne Hubbard, coordinator of the BIS program, was also moved by Logan: \u201cI was impressed with his commitment to the topics covered in a course I taught him and with his interest in using this information to make positive changes in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nLogan, who is married with young children, would like to get his doctorate and return to Liberia one day to help those less fortunate, especially women, who are treated like second-class citizens. \u201cWomen are regarded as the property of men,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are abused on a daily basis. These are the things still crippling the Liberian society.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHis homeland is never far from his thoughts. He\u2019s been collecting old textbooks from 溏心vlog免费B站 students to ship to Liberia, where it\u2019s common for many university students to share one book. His program is called \u201cEach One Give One Book.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIn Liberia the government doesn\u2019t care about its people,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no aid for college, no access to education and no running water. The government kills its own people. There is so much in this country, so much to appreciate. My life has turned around. My mother would be proud of me \u2013 very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above: Emmanuel Logan, a 2013 graduate of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education who fled war-torn Liberia and achieved his dream of graduating from college in America. Photo by Michael Salerno Photography<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providence resident to study public policy in graduate school KINGSTON, R.I. \u2014 April 10, 2013 \u2014 Emmanuel Logan lost his mother on a spring day nearly two decades ago. Logan watched in horror as the rebels dragged Sarah from her house in Liberia for speaking out against the recruitment of child soldiers to fight in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}