Note #9097 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06055 Feb. 3, 2006
In Liberia, job skills are survival skills
Vocational training offers hope to people handicapped by 14 years of civil war
by Toya Richards Hill
GARDNERSVILLE, LIBERIA - In a country where unemployment is estimated at 85 percent, having a marketable skill can be a matter of life and death.
In Liberia, having some sort of vocation means food on the table and money to send your children to school - and enables a person to move from a life of dependence to one of self-reliance.
Liberians "need to be self-supportive," says Thelma Johnson, director of the Awareness Counseling Center (ACC), a small, local, non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses on vocational training and adult literacy. Johnson says Liberians need to "use their intelligence and their hands."
Walk through the mortar-buckled streets of the capital city of Monrovia, jam-packed with peddlers trying to sell everything from plastic pails to men's cologne, and you'll see Liberians trying to make a way in the world. Those who seem to do it best are the ones offering services, rather than merchandise.
Beauticians skilled in the latest Western hairstyles have shops full of young Liberian women. Tailors working on antiquated Singer sewing machines are kept busy turning out custom-made African outfits, right on the spot.
It's jobs like these that attract May Partee, a 32-year-old mother of two who says she's becoming a tailor "because I want to help myself."
Partee has enrolled in a tailoring class at ACC for seven months - and when that course is over, she says, "I will take hairdressing."
"It's for my children," aged 4 and 13, she says. "It's for them to go to school."
The need for training is equally important to 23-year-old Prince Powell, one of the thousands of young Liberians whose educations became casualties of a 14-year-long civil war that ended in 2003 when United Nations peacekeepers took control.
It's not uncommon for Liberian youngsters in their teens to be still making their way through grade school. Yet, for those like Powell, there is hope in vocational training.
"I love sewing," he says as he works at one of a handful of sewing machines at ACC. "I want to graduate to become a tailor on my own."
ACC also provides training in other trades, including quilting, pastry making, tie-dying and soap making. Items made at the center are sold at market. Training is organized in three-, six- and eight-month courses. Johnson estimates that the center has trained 3,000 people since it opened in 1994.
ACC's funding comes from several sources, including the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) program. In 2004, PDA provided a $10,000 grant.
Yet the ACC, like practically all local NGOs in Liberia, never has enough money to reach its lofty goals. "We are Africa, and we have been left behind, especially in Liberia," Johnson laments.
She has big plans. She intends to expand the one-building operation into a campus including a vocational training center, a facility for orphans and single mothers and a recreation center.
"We have a parcel of land already," she says. "We could start this year, depending on the funds ... something like $200,000 (U.S.)."
For now, ACC's mission is to change lives in the here and now.
The people in ACC's programs, especially the women, "are suffering," observes Korpo Mason, ACC's tie-dying instructor. "It's very difficult to get money in this country."
Teaching and training, Mason says, are the keys to enabling people to "do better things for themselves."
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