Giving children a good childhood
Childhood should be about playing, growing and developing … not fighting. When we came to Liberia, though, we found 8-year-old children who had been recruited to become soldiers. To give the children of Liberia their childhood back, we first established Interim Care Centers as a safe haven for these children. Now we focus on rehabilitating communities and reintegrating war-affected women and children as well as internally displaced persons and refugees into these communities.
Our Community Child Welfare Committees serve an important role in our mission, offering education on child protection, child rights, Gender-Based Violence (GBV), conflict resolution and HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment. In May 2005, we opened an Information and Legal AID Center to provide legal services and counseling to Sierra Leone war refugees living in Liberia.
To address Gender-Based Violence in Liberia, we have partnered with IrishAID to implement the Safeguarding the Future Effectively (SAFE) program in the Bomi, Gbarpolu and Grand Cape Mount areas. SAFE not only responds to the needs – health, psychological, legal, and protection – of GBV survivors, but it also works to create awareness of these crimes within communities and in so doing, change pervasive attitudes. Our awareness campaign includes sessions on domestic violence, harmful traditional practices, women's rights, consequences of GBV and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS.
This country’s former warriors now must return to being simply Liberia’s children. One of the most important elements of this transition is education. With support from UNICEF, our Community Education and Investment Project works to enroll demobilized child soldiers in primary school. We have also built new schools and supported more than 110 schools with learning materials, including the provision of more than 75,000 books.
Many children in Liberia have no clean, safe water to wash their hands in before meals. By using the dirty water from streams, these children contract a variety of waterborne diseases. Safe water and adequate sanitation is an urgent need in Liberia. We work to construct wells in villages as well as provide training on hygiene and hand pump maintenance and repair.
“Each child deserves to have at least a few years in their lives with enough food and love and hugs. Unfortunately, all my husband and I can do is give them the clean water.” – Mitzi Bernier, who funded the construction of a well in Liberia.
Giving families the tools to feed their children is also critical. Our food security programs focus on seed distribution and technical training so that farmers not only can feed their families but also generate income from their surplus crops. Animal husbandry techniques give families alternative ways of earning money. We provide additional vocational skills training to local workers and offer small grants to families to make the most of their vocational training.
As a result of our work in Liberia, children are beginning to be children again. Help us give the children of Liberia children all the advantages they need to grow into healthy, happy adults.
