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

        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

        Partee has been taking 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

        
         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.”