Paynesville – The Government of Liberia, with support from the European Union and the Swedish Embassy has officially inducted the new TVET Teachers into its Youth educational program.
The program is under the auspices of the Youth Rising Project and Youth Employment Promotion.
The teachers, from public institutions are 78 in numbers and some are expected to travel soon for advance skill training in Kenya, while others will head to The Gambia.
Making remarks Friday, January 30, at the induction program held at the MVTC campus along the Somalis Drive, Assistant Education Minister for TVET Science and Technology, Saku Dukuly said young people in Liberia must be an integral part of leading development and as such, it was important for them to venture into skill trainings.
However, he said, before they can do that, they must be well equipped with the necessary skills, expertise in their different disciplines required to move Liberia forward.
“So, this project supported by EU and Promoting Youth Employment supported by Swedish Government is intended to prepare young people in various environment to be able to take on the task of this nation,” Minister Dukuly averred.
While doing this, Minister Dukuly said the first step is to prepare vocational institutions in Liberia to be able to undertake the challenge of training young people in different disciplines.
Therefore, he added that the selection of the first batch of teaches for the program will help address such challenge.
Minister Dukuly said Liberia has not had such opportunity to have a group of teachers in such number, who are expected to go for advanced training outside the country, since the coming to being of TVET education.
“You are blessed to be among this group; so, I would like to say to you all, please do not fail this country, because we are going to invest a lot of money in preparing you to be a good teacher, and we will depend on you to be able to provide the services, for which we are preparing you,” Minister Dukuly maintained. The training by Youth Rising and partners, is a five-year project targeting TVET teachers in some counties across Liberia.
The five counties include, Montserrado, Margibi, Sinoe, Maryland, Bong, Grand Cape Mount and Grand Gedeh Counties, among others.
The project is valued at 20 million Euros and intended to improve infrastructure development, strengthen teachers’ capacities and empower them. Recently, the teachers were presented laptops and other digital learning equipment.
The support was geared at strengthening their capacities from a manual system of preparing for classroom activities to a modern system.
The teachers were said to have left Liberia since June, 2020, but their trip was delayed due to the COVID-19 crisis.