LIBERIA
context
Liberia is one of the world’s poorest countries. The effects of 2 civil wars, the Ebola crisis, and Covid-19 are still felt today. 3 out of 10 people live under the poverty line in urban areas, with the number increasing up to 8 out of 10 in rural areas. Liberia’s main source of income is agriculture, which has been badly affected by climate change, pushing even more people into poverty.
Within this context, getting children into school and keeping them there are very challenging. Half of children of school-going age aren’t in school. On average only 61% of teachers in Liberia have obtained a teaching certificate, with the percentage reducing in rural areas.
Although public education is officially free, schools charge indirect fees, often preventing families from affording their children’s education. School infrastructures are usually overcrowded, in poor conditions and under resourced. Girls often face extra challenges getting an education. Many schools don’t have proper bathrooms for them, and cultural expectations, such as early marriage or caring for younger siblings, can stop them from going to or finishing school.
YOUR IMPACT in liberia
34,119
Reached with school improvements
48,450
Children reached through our programmes.
932
Teachers trained.
what we are doing
Street Child started operating in Liberia in 2013 working to tackle the barriers preventing children from accessing education. Since then, Street Child has specialized in advancing rural education as well as addressing poverty barriers to education in urban areas. We have supported over 51,600 children, distributed over 5,400 FBE grants to vulnerable caregivers, internally trained 850 teachers, built 87 classrooms and supported 98 teachers to enrol into teacher training college.
Street Child continues to work side by side with rural communities to kick-start and transform education through classroom construction, teacher training, and the development of community advocacy and sustainability strategies. We also work in urban areas, especially around the capital Monrovia, where we target the most vulnerable communities through social work to ensure children can enrol into school and their caregivers can generate an income to keep them in school.
The Education For Every Child Today (EFECT) programme is Street Child’s largest programme to date. This is a four-year project in partnership with Educate A Child (EAC), a global programme of the Education Above All (EAA) Foundation, supported by the Qatar Fund for Development, with the aim of increasing primary education access and retention for 13,500 vulnerable children across Liberia. This will help the multi-country project's overall goal of getting 96,000 out-of-school children back in school full-time in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. To guarantee that programme effects are long-lasting, in addition to enrolment and learning, the initiative will also support teacher training and professional development as well as strengthening the livelihoods of parents and caregivers.
In the first two years of this intervention, we have enrolled more than 4,600 children into education. Throughout this process we have also built five schools and distributed cash grants to 1,210 caregivers to establish or grow a business and support their children's education.
Our team is working with the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection in Liberia to support more children into education. In this new project, launched by President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr., our team is aiming to enroll 50,000 street-connected children into school over the next 6 years.
To find out more about this partnership and programme, follow the link below.
Street Child is supporting caregivers in Liberia to develop a sustainable source of income to send their children to school through our award-winning ‘Family Business for Education’ scheme. To date, over 5,400 households have been provided with tailored assistance, including training packages, business grants and saving and mentoring schemes.
Through this model of financial empowerment, paired with social support and community level engagement programmes, over 13,000 children in Liberia have enrolled and continued in education.
Street Child has worked with various local partners in collaboration with the Liberia’s Ministry of Education to build schools in hard-to-reach rural areas across several counties. Often, children in rural areas cannot access education due to a lack of educational infrastructure. Thanks to our school construction efforts, we are working to address this barrier and have built 87 classrooms to date, with another 48 currently under construction.
Additionally, we have trained and supported over 800 teachers to improve the quality of education and have sponsored over 80 teachers to obtain the minimum teaching certification to teach in the schools we build as well as schools already in the public system.
improving educational access in liberia
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