Greatest Need - Liberia
Liberia is emerging from a long and violent history of civil war. According to the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGE), hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, loved ones dislocated from their families and community. Basic social services are disrupted at best, with rural areas going without. All these factors have contributed to making women and children more vulnerable to extreme poverty, hunger, disease – particularly AIDS.
The history of the armed conflict has also created significant barriers to education – particularly for girls. UNGE reports that the majority of the Liberians are living in poverty, high dropout rates for girls is due to teen pregnancy, early marriage and harmful traditional practices, In addition, the majority of teachers are unqualified and only 19 per cent of all teacher are women.
Two of the three 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winners are from Liberia honored “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work": Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Leymah Gbowee a Liberian Peace activist. With these and others in the forefront of change the future looks brighter.
Liberia is part of our Computers for Girls initiative designed to provide computers to schools that help address barriers to girls’ education. This shipment is WCE’s 2nd to Liberia and the third country as part of our Computers for Girls initiative.
Our Girls' project expects to impact approximately 7,000 youth and provide schools in Liberia:
- 200 refurbished Pentium 4 computers and up
- Teacher training for 30 teachers from the 15 recipient schools
- Visits by an evaluator to provide additional guidance and report on the progress of this project.
The training in the use of computers, the use of Ubuntu (Linux) operating system, and the educational use of the internet through online multi-country experiential learning projects will be provided by WCE Partner iEARN-Liberia.
Volunteers from the WCE Boston Chapter are refurbishing the computers and loading software so that the shipment will be ready in March 2012 to be shipped to the port of Morovia, Liberia.
Computers for Girls Liberia is possible by the generous support of Carol Deane who has sponsored the last 1/3 of the sourcing and shipping costs for a container, the teacher training and the evaluator. Computers for Girls has shipped to Zimbabwe with a shipment to Pakistan scheduled for March 2012.
To be part of WCE's Computers for Girls initiative organizations agree to ensure that girls have access to computers providing by WCE by:
- Designating a person who will be responsible for ensuring girls have access to the computers and included content
- Participating in technology and teacher training to ensure program success
- Provide annual reports and participate in a site visit evaluation
So far, WCE has heard interest in participating from the following groups in Liberia:
- Achievement Center for Youth & Child (Monrovia) (10 sets)
- African Child Peace Initiative (Monrovia) (15 sets)
- Defence For Children Int. (Monrovia) (5? sets)
- iEARN-Liberia (Margibi County) (Partner-10 sets)
- Int. Association for Volunteer Effort for Youth Lab for Girls (Monrovia) (10 sets)
- Liberian International Foundation for Education (Monrovia) (? sets)
- Monrovia Central Prison (Monrovia) (5 sets)
- NEPSO Liberia (?) (? sets)
- Respect Liberia (Monrovia) (Partner-5? sets)
- River Gee Citizens Union (Monrovia) (Partner-10 sets)
Find out more information about applying for computers.
