Evelyn is ready to take on the world

Evelyn is just one of thousands of children in Liberia who have benefited from Plan’s Rapid Education programme.

Evelyn, a 10-year old girl living with her parents in a vulnerable suburban community in Liberia, had always admired her friends who went to school in their smart uniforms. She, like many others in the community lacked this opportunity because her parents could not afford the fees.

The mainstay of her family’s livelihood is vegetable gardening, which barely yields enough to provide the family with one meal per day.

Even the introduction of free and compulsory primary education by the government did not bring Evelyn any closer to realising her dream. The nearest government school is about five miles away and the fees charged by the nearby private school are too high for Evelyn’s parents.

Evelyn’s days were spent either in the market, helping her mother sell, or in the garden, weeding. “Some days, I felt like running away into the streets or committing suicide”, she explained.

“I was growing beyond the primary school age, but the desire to go to school was still strong in me, so when I heard that a free school for poor people was opening, I knew that God had heard my prayers.”

Evelyn entered the Neezoe Town Rapid Education Center in 2004 at the age of eight, unable to count from 1-10 and write and read her own name.

After spending two and a half years at the centre, Evelyn graduated in June this year armed with basic literacy, numeracy and life skills, fully prepared to meet the challenges of the second grade in the mainstream formal school system.

“On the basis of the report cards and grade sheets I received from the Rapid Education School, I have been offered a place in the second grade at one of the schools in the neighbourhood and my parents have vowed to work hard to support me. Now, I believe I will realize my dream of becoming a nurse,” said Evelyn.

Evelyn was one of 3,800 children attending one of the Plan-supported, non-formal rapid education schools in 18 communities in rural and urban Liberia.

The initiative started as an effort to replicate in Liberia the rapid education program which had worked in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Through funding from Plan, local implementing partner, Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), received support to implement the Rapid Education project in 2004.

The programme was designed to ensure the availability of increased learning opportunities to war-affected children in vulnerable communities and to build the capacities of communities and the government to support and eventually transform the non-formal schools into regular institutions.

Its implementation was initially intended to last for two years, but the opening of a Plan office in Liberia in December 2006, coupled with the desire to ensure a smooth phase-out of the children into the mainstream formal education system, prompted its extension for another six months.

Like Evelyn, 3,800 children will graduate from this non-formal program into the formal primary school system in their communities.