Monrovia – In Liberia, the provision of compulsory free primary education remains a challenge for children from underprivileged background as many cannot afford the basics of uniforms and textbooks.
However, one local NGO is looking to change all that. It Takes A Village Africa (ITVA) says it has arrived at a decision to open free primary school for more than two hundred children in the Zubah Town Community in Duport Road, Paynesville City.
It Takes A Village Africa is a community development non-profit organization that promotes education, agriculture, and healthcare programs in Liberia.
Erica Davis, the head of the ITVA says she returned to her native land to give back. In a chitchat with FrontPageAfrica, she said ITVA will open the school in order to help the less fortunate kids in the country.
According to her, she hails from a family of educators and giving back has always been the trademark of her family.
“My mother always gave back and my grandmother was always giving back to the community”.
“She was an educator, my great grandfather was an educator, and my grandfather was an educator. So, it is in the family to give back, because we always understand that education is the key and through God all things are possible.”
The school, when built, will be properly managed by the organization, she mentioned. She added that the school will be opened when the academic year ends to get kids prepared for the next academic year.
“We are going to open up the school hopefully at the end of this month. We’re going to be able to open up an educational program just to be able for the children to get use to school.
We will have a cake rally, we will have like a book club or something to be able to get the children more engaged; so when it’s time to start school, they will be able to understand the role on how to be able to learn and conduct themselves in the classroom,” Davis said.
According to Davis, some volunteers and others will be hired to be able to put a special attention on the children with the help of the people of the community.
“We have more than enough volunteers; we have more than enough people here in Liberia that’s willing to participate in this organization. So, they can reach out to the office here on Ashmun Street to be able to put in their application and submit their CV. For some, we are asking for volunteers and we are also going to be hiring some staff as well”, she said.
She added “We are going to target the less fortunate children—the children whose parents are not able to send them to school, the children that want to learn; anybody that wants to learn is going to be able to come to the school. It is going to be free of charge and is going to run from pre-k to sixth grade and it is going be held in Zubah Town.”
Davis said the school will be opened for two months and they are only dealing with children in the Zubah Town community.
“We are only dealing with Zubah Town for now because there are already 218 children. As time goes by, we’re going to open it up to other communities”, she also said.
It Takes A Village Africa is working with the community to provide a quality, innovative educational in Liberia’s educational structure which is currently underachieving.
It takes a village will also operate a comparative study of maternity waiting homes in rural areas to decrease maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in Liberia.
J.H. Webster Clayeh (0886729972) [email protected]