LIBERIA
context
Liberia ranked 177 out of 189 on the UNDP Human Development Index in 2023 and is on-track to be the last country in the world to achieve universal basic education.
Despite a government commitment to free and compulsory primary education, the public school system has been unable to meet demand and therefore many schools charge informal fees, leaving the most vulnerable families unable to meet the costs of basic education for their children.
LIBERIA IN NUMBERS
48%
Of Liberia's population are children.
Over 210,000
Of children are out of school.
48.3%
Is the adult literacy rate as of 2022.
what we are doing
Street Child started working in Liberia in 2013, helping street-connected children in the capital of Monrovia. When Liberia was hit with the Ebola crisis, we expanded our work to support the thousands of children impacted by Ebola in their education. Street Child is now working in four counties across Liberia: Montserrado, Margibi, Maryland, and River Gee.
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 enroll 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.
In Liberia, Street Child is supporting caregivers to develop a sustainable source of income in order to send their children to school. To date, over 5,179 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 12,000 children have enrolled and continued in education.
Street Child is a key partner in the Liberian Education Advancement Partnership (LEAP), a public-private initiative aimed at improving the quality of education in public schools. Through LEAP, the government collaborates with private organisations to support the administration and management of public schools with the goal of boosting learning outcomes. Street Child has also signed an agreement to manage 40 public schools in Maryland and Margibi counties.
As part of LEAP, we are working on school improvements such as renovating buildings, providing more furniture and learning materials, training teachers and Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs), and increasing stipends for volunteer teachers.
improving educational access in liberia
YOUR IMPACT in liberia
31,806
Reached with school improvements
43,244
Children reached through our programmes.
901
Teachers trained.
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