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Friends of Liberia Grant Supports
Gardnersville Central Academy, Monrovia, Liberia
by John Kucij, FOL Board of Trustees
Introduction
The Gardnersville Central Academy (GCA) was organized
in the fall of 2001 and began serving students in March 2002. GCA is
located on Bushrod Island in Monrovia, an area jammed with
internally displaced families whose lives have been forever changed
by 15 years of civil war and civil unrest in Liberia.
The school was set up as a K-12 program and enrollment
has grown steadily. As of November 1, 2004
the school population surpassed 700 students. While an estimated 15%
of the students come from families that have lived in the area for
15+ years, the remainder of the students are from the interior or
“upcountry” areas of Liberia. Some of them were born in one of
Bushrod’s many refugee-swollen neighborhoods; others came as infants
or toddlers. Still others were the child conscripts of one of the
numerous rebel groups which terrorized the Liberian civilian
population. The vast majority of students represent the Loma, Gbande,
Kpelle and Bassa tribes of Liberia.
The school began operations with virtually no resources
other than the meager tuition fees paid by students’ families and
some small donations from local businesses. Today the school staff
includes 15 teachers, 4 administrators and 3 security and support
staff. The average salary for a teacher is $25US per month.
Administrators make slightly more and other staffers, about half
what teachers earn. These salaries are typical for Liberia and it is
also typical that government employees, including those paid through
the Ministry of Education, often go four or more months without even
partial payment and must struggle to get by.
FOL's Role
During the summer of 2002, FOL Board member John Kucij
received a funding proposal from the school. The request asked for
over $20,000 to upgrade the facilities, add staff, provide
scholarships, and accommodate the many needs of a rapidly expanding
program. Initially, John was able to acquire two used computers and
related hardware and shipped them to GCA as part of a larger
shipment of materials to be used in another FOL project, the
Liberian Education Assistance Program (LEAP). Clearly
much more was needed.
FOL receives many requests for financial help from groups and
individuals in Liberia and too often must refuse assistance, but the GCA request coincided with an FOL initiative to identify several
mini-grant recipients to be assisted through a variety of small
initiatives. The concept was to expand FOL’s presence in Liberia and
FOL’s impact on rebuilding Liberia: both its physical and its
social infrastructure. Each initiative required an FOL Board
“champion”, a volunteer to coordinate the grant implementation and
monitor its impact. John Kucij presented a summary proposal to fund
GCA at a rate of $4,800 per year and volunteered to steward the
grant and provide accountability to the Board and membership of FOL.
The grant was awarded in March 2003, providing salary
subsidies for staff, sports equipment, scholarships, and a stipend
and logistical expense support for a Liberian to serve as FOL’s
on-site grant coordinator. Moses Arku was hired as the FOL on-site
coordinator and worked closely with GCA until December 2003, when
poor health forced him to resign. He was replaced by Johnson Koryon
Luworza.
During the summer of 2003 the fragile peace in Monrovia
was disrupted by another outbreak of rebel activity and the school
lost two months of instruction and was looted and damaged. FOL
awarded an additional $500 in emergency funds to assist the
resumption of GCA operations. Since then there has been steady
progress and student performances on standardized National
Examinations have improved. In January 2004, two FOL LEAP
representatives visited GCA. During the summer of 2004 GCA teachers
took part in LEAP training.
FOL completed its second year of funding in March 2005
and is considering a third year of help if additional funds can be
raised both in Liberia
and the United States to supplement FOL funding. Presently we are
using unexpended funds from previous allocations as well as some
targeted funding donated specifically for GCA.
The GCA project presents an ideal avenue for supporting
the rebuilding process within Liberia. There’s no such thing as
tuition free school in Liberia as all schools, public & private,
create ingenious fees of all sorts in order to scrape together
enough to barely operate. Anyone wishing to support GCA can do so by
sponsoring a scholarship at $25US per semester or furnishings at
$50US or a general donation in any amount. All contributions help.
You might want to consider getting your service organization or
local school to adopt GCA through a fundraiser of their own or
simply soliciting donations on behalf of GCA. Currently it is only
feasible to accept cash donations as the shipping costs are
prohibitive unless we know of someone traveling to Liberia and they
are able to carry a reasonable sized parcel. Please consider
supporting Gardnersville Central Academy.
John Kucij remains the FOL coordinator for the GCA
project and can be reached at LKucij@Juno.com or 518-372-9578. Mail
questions and donations to GCA Project c/o John Kucij, 936
Livingston Ave. Schenectady, N.Y. 12309. Further information on
Friends of Liberia is available at www.fol.org.
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