This project seeks to provide full sets of curriculum texbooks for the Carolyn A Miller School in Paynesville, Liberia. The school is one of only a few non-fee paying schools that provides education from kindergarten to 12th grade, and is currently delivering free education to 500 of Liberia's poorest children who do not have the means to buy their own textbooks. The school is helping to rebuild the damaged educational infrastructure that 14 years of civil war has created.
Text books are expensive in Liberia. There is only one bookshop in Monrovia that sells all the set texts and they have to be imported from Ghana and the USA, driving the prices up. Most Liberians cannot afford to buy set textbooks for each student, and teachers struggle to deliver the curriculum in its entirety. in 2009, no Liberian student passed the West African Education Certificate, putting all at a significant disadvantage against their neighbours.
The school will gradually build up a collection of set texts that span the entire grade system, providing enough books per classroom so that students do not need to buy them. By having access to the full curriculum, teachers can educate each new generation of students so that the development gap between Liberia and its neighbours is less pronounced. This means the poorest young Liberians can graduate with sound qualifications that will allow them to access the job market and higher education.
Liberia needs to keep up with its West African counterparts, so studying the same texts at the same rate will help young Liberians pass their West African Certificate of Education, create a new, skilled workforce and help Liberia reach its goal of sustainability after 14 years of civil war. Educating an individual educates a whole family, meaning it is more likely that their children will attend school. It also decreases the birthrate and delays early pregnancy in young women.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
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