Introducing Lovetta Conto...

The word 'bullet' conjures up images of bloodshed and war for me but I recently stumbled upon Lovetta who has shown me that goodness can come out of anything,turning bullets into jewellery. Check out her life story:

My name is Lovetta Conto and I’m seventeen years old. I was born in Liberia, West Africa but fled to Ghana as a refugee with my father when I was just a little girl because of the civil war in our country. Hundreds of thousands of people left the country.

In Africa, everywhere you turn you are told, “It ain’t gonna happen”. But my dad would always say "Keep walking. Press on. It's going to happen." He was right.
When I was growing up in the refugee camp, life didn’t look like it was going anywhere for me or anybody else. But going through the war gave me my strength, and I knew it was not the end of my life.

I envisioned myself as a tree growing up, growing fruit and giving my fruit to other people who needed help. My imagination saw me as more than I was. I knew I had to create a future for myself.



In the refugee camp we had a school. I wanted to get an education and so I went. My dad taught me education was the way to raise your life up. My dad taught me to believe in my dreams. My dad worked hard to get money to support us and pay for my education because school is not free in most of Africa, not even in the refugee camp.

A lot of times we didn’t have food to eat before school. If we couldn’t pay my school fees, I would be kicked out of school, which happened sometimes no matter how hard my father worked to put the money together. After school I didn’t always get to do my homework until late because I would have to spend many hours fetching water for cooking and bathing. But I knew I had to get an education so I kept going. I had to prepare myself to go for my future.



When I was twelve years old, I met Cori Stern, the founder of Strongheart Fellowship, in the refugee camp where I lived. I was so nervous talking to her for the first time. I didn’t know who she was but something in me told me she would be someone important to my future.

She told me about her plans to help young people with hard lives change their future, so that they could one day help other people. The organization she started was called Strongheart Fellowship because of the quote from the writer named Hemingway, “The world breaks us all and after some are stronger in the broken places.”

Read more of her story here