Our mission is to create a supportive and cultural connection between youth in Maine and Liberia. Maine high school students from different schools fundraise for a number of Liberian high school students to attend school each year. Our scholarship recipients and graduates are located throughout five of the thirteen counties in Liberia. Because of the instability in the country, the Liberian government does not currently support an effective, free public education system. Public schools do exist, but often teachers are not paid so they do not come to school, and students, lacking desks, paper, and books, do not have the resources they need to learn. Thus, in order to obtain a good high school education in Liberia, most students must attend a private high school. However, these schools typically cost between $200 and $300 per year, which is far too much for many Liberian families to afford. Thus, for our scholarship program we select students that show both academic merit and financial need, and cover the full cost of high school tuition, which includes all of their books and their uniform. We believe that a high school education will enable them to achieve a much higher standard of life.
NOW
Today after successfully graduating thirteen Liberian students, we are currently providing full scholarships to fourteen high school students. Though all past scholarships have been funded by the work of Belfast Area High School students, this year we will expand our fundraising efforts to other Maine schools in order to increase our impact in Liberia. In Fall of 2012 we are hoping to double our high school scholarship recipients with the funds raised by the additional Maine schools. Also beginning in 2012 we hope to have Maine high school graduates involved with LEF begin to support the Liberian graduates in attending the Liberian college or University of their choice through grant funding.
FUTURE
In the future we would like to have many Maine schools involved in our fundraising efforts allowing us to continually increase our number of Liberian high school scholarship recipients. As they graduate we hope to be able to provide support for any or all of our recipients through college.
In order to establish greater connections between Maine and Liberian students we are working on starting an annual cultural exchange program that would allow Maine students involved with LEF to travel to Liberia and work with the Liberian students in our program. We hope this program will help promote cultural interaction and effectively bridge the gap between our two distant continents.
Our Liberian chief coordinator, Joe-Hoover Gbadyu, dreams of starting primary schools in different counties in Liberia. These schools would provide a low-cost and accessible educational foundation; something that Liberia's educational system currently lacks. The Liberian Education Fund hopes to support Mr. Gbadyu in accomplishing this goal.
