Monrovia – The Cities Alliance Liberia Country Programme with funding from Comic Relief has
Report by Alpha Daffae Senkpeni, [email protected]
The Community Upgrading Fund or CUF aims to ensure community participation and engagement in the planning and development of social and environmental infrastructure that responds to their immediate needs of priorities as a community.
A pilot of three intervention projects was officially launched in West Point, Popo Beach and King Peter Town on Monday, January 28.
The project includes the construction of three water kiosks in Popo Beach Community, another three water kiosks in King Peter Town and a nursery school building in West Point community.
In West Point, a three room nursery annex at the N.V Massaquoi school will be constructed in 60 days, according the contractor.
The upgrading of the school expects to enhance the enrollment of more pupils from the community and at the same time ease financial burden on parents who can’t afford private school fees.
“We still want to see more children going to school but there was no space but with this project we are happy,” says E. Musu Coleman, chair of the school management team.
“This is what we have been yearning for, to see it become reality we are very thankful. It will do a lot of improvements in the life of little kids in the community and give them a solid education foundation.”
McPhearson Daweh, youth president of West Point, described the project as “an immense and welcoming news”, adding that it will keep many kids off the street.
“Most often children get drown [in the ocean] as a result of just roaming around in the streets. So, I think with this government kindergarten section here in West Point, it will also prevent that,” Daweh said.
“Many of us do not have the money to pay for private education for our kids so with this project, I think it will alleviate the families’ financial burden.”
Currently the school has over 1,200 students in the absence of a kindergarten space, according to Principal Gleh Mason. Mr. Mason is optimistic that additional 150 kindergarten students will enroll when the building is completed, while also promising to support the project.
“We are going to give all of our moral and technical support [to the contractors] for the project; we are going to give our fullest cooperation because this is our project,” he said.
Upon hearing the news of the project, several of the students described the initiative as “good news for our little brothers and sister who are out of school”.
“They [children] will have free education, something that will lead them to the future,” says Freida Kofie, a 9th grader.
“Looking at our community where there are lot of children who parents can’t afford to pay their school fees and they have to keep selling in the market, they will have the opportunity to come to school too,” added Joseph Roberts, another 9th student.
West Point community, Liberia’s biggest slum community, faces enormous challenges and the lack of basic social services remain scarce for most residents.
Jerry Paye, a social worker with the YMCA who has been engaging the community to identify needed projects, described the intervention of Cities Alliance as “ the backbone” in sourcing the funding to impact these slum communities.
“We don’t have money to make the changes, but we have ideas to make the changes, so we asked some people who have money to help us build a resilient community,” he said of Cities Alliance support, while admonishing the community to take ownership of the project.
“The next time when people come to you and say they want to throw stones you will say no, because we all decided that we want school.”
Francisco Juarez Lopez, programme manager of Cities Alliance, reiterated that the programme is commitment to “bringing together local, municipal and national governments” for the upgrading of slum communities.
“Community leaders engagement is our priority and we are very happy to see this project happening under this approach – everyone is actively participating and we will exert all of our efforts to ensure the project is successful,” Lopez said.
In New Kru Town, the groundbreaking for the construction of three water kiosks was also held on Monday, January 28 in Popo Beach community.
Three more kiosks will also be built in the King Peter community, which is couple of kilometers outside the densely populated borough of New Kru Town.
Several families in the community had earlier agreed to lend space for the construction of the water kiosk, which will provide clean pipe borne water for several thousands of residents.
Madam Georgia C. Baryor, chair of all the 25 communities of New Kru Town, hailed the land owners for making commitment to the community for the use of their space. She described them as “the pioneers of the project in our community”.
“This pump will be for you [so] don’t say that community property and mismanage the facility. Your please keep the facility clean,” she told members of the community witnessing the groundbreaking exercise.
“We know the needs of our community and we are happy our partners made this possible for the project to start officially,” said Raymond Zazay, Director of Public Infrastructure of the Ministry of Public Works, at the groundbreaking in Popo Beach community.
Mr. Zazay, who had earlier formed part of the groundbreaking of the school annex in West Point, called on the contractors to “do nothing less than” what the designs of the water kiosk shows on the drawing.
The contractor also called on the community for support during construction of the water kiosks and emphasized that they “want to work with females of the community, whether they are technical or not, they should just be willing to work.”
Several community members promised to fully cooperate with the engineers for successful of the project.
The Community Upgrading Fund (CUF) is an initial startup fund provided to promote rapid and visible sustainable lifesaving small infrastructure investments in slum and settlement communities while larger policy debates on the urban poor and development are taking place.
The CUF enables slum dwellers settlement-based and urban poor organizations to access grants to finance community-based small infrastructure projects that meet the top priority community needs under clearly defined criteria. Beyond the Programme, it is envisaged that the fund will grow out of contributions from the central and local government, international agencies and contributions from the beneficiary communities.
To be implemented, the CUF intervention projects must be identified through community settlement forums which is a platform for community members to identify and priorities community needs in a participatory approach and submission made through the community engagement partner YMCA, to Cities Alliance.
A standing steering committee stakeholders including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Public Works, Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation, Monrovia and Paynesville City Corporation, and Environmental protection Agency assess the feasibility of the proposed project to meet a defined cost range and criteria and ensuring that social and environmental safeguard is protected and preserved for city planning and creation of a resilient and better cities before approval by the committee.
The implementation of the 3 pilot projects is a start to more community based projects in slum communities of Greater Monrovia planned to be provided under the CUF project from 2019-2021.
Cities Alliance is the global partnership for urban poverty reduction promoting and strengthening the role of cities in sustainable development.
Cities Alliance offers support to cities and development partnerships to foster effective local government, promoting an active citizenship and encouraging pro-poor public and private investment.