Provide a quality education for girls in Liberia

Germinating Every Mind Liberia

Periodic Report: October 2024 –January 21, 2025

Submitted to: GlobalGiving

Date: January 21, 2024

GEM and the Jennifer Albee Enrichment School extend their profound gratitude to GlobalGiving and all our generous donors for their continuous support to the girls of Liberia.

GEM- Liberia is pleased to present its quarterly report. The periodic report is part of the Germinating Every Mind-Liberia's commitment to GlobalGiving and donors. This period's report covers from October 2024 to January 21, 2024.

Project Overview

Germinating Every Mind Liberia, “Provide A Quality Education For Girls in Liberia Project,” is a project that helps provide stable access to a safe, quality education for girls from an impoverished area near Monrovia. The Jennifer Albee Enrichment School, an all-girls school named after a champion of women leaders, was founded to provide academic excellence, career development, and life skills training to girls who otherwise couldn't afford it. Girls graduate fully prepared to take on viable professions and empowered to make positive life decisions.

Problem: Harsh economic conditions reducing a girl's chance of completing formal education Solution: Provide stable access to safe quality education from an impoverished background for girls in Liberia Impact- A future without poverty

Strategy- establish a safe-affordable school tailored for girls Project: Providing Quality Education for Girls in Liberia.

 Huge Milestones

For the period under review, GEM and the Jennifer Albee Enrichment School had some great achievements. Those achievements include students’ immense academic performances, admittance to academic clubs, and selection for participation in the 2024 World Human Rights Day celebration where its founder, Madam Davidetta Togba Cassell served as a motivational speakers to the attending students. The achievements are explained in details below.

 1. Massive Academic Pass:

79% of the students successfully passed their second marking period exams. The highest ranking class is the 5^th grade class with nearly all of its students making it to the honors list. Students Ora scored the highest average of 95.6%. In the nursery and beginner division, there is improved encoding and decoding skills.

The students in the nursery and beginner levels, have demonstrated significant improvement by being able to be read numbers and letters, match them with their pictures and write them too. This means our nursery kids are understanding encoding and decoding https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DJehqDriA/.

2. Reading Festival Participants

In November, the school participated in a reading festival. Our students were given books to read, and led sessions of reading during the festival. Some of the greatest schools in the republic were present, yet we, made a strike to obtain a lead spot among the schools. Student Henrietta led parts of the reading sessions.

3. World Human Rights Day Celebration 

Jennifer Albee Enrichment School joined several other schools in the Barnersville and Gardnersville Township to celebrate World Human Rights Day on December 10, 2024. The program was hosted by the township. While at the program, our executive director Madam Davidetta Togba Cassell served as one of the speakers, speaking on the topic, know your rights and responsibilities. Also, the girls shared that knowledge about what they know about human rights.

 4. Admittance Into Major Junior High School Quizzing Tournaments

The Jennifer Albee Enrichment School was admitted into major junior high schools academic quizzing competitions. Few of the institutions that admitted the school in their tournaments are Pathway and Edu-Hope Initiative. The schools’ selection is based on the girls’ show of good performances at public speaking programs. The competitions allow the school to compete against schools of mix gender for awards in four key subjects, Mathematics, General Science, Literacy and Social Studies.

Challenges

Our major challenges remain lack of transport services for our school and the construction of a bigger and better school facility.

1. Transportation service for every school is an essential aspect of the operation of the school and it contributes to school growth. Students who are desirous of attending the school, but live far distances are influenced by the school bus system. It creates safety for movement to and from school and eases the burden of finding public transports to get to school.

 2. Structure-In Liberia, school facility plays a major factor in helping parents to make decisions on the choice of school to send their kids. An improved and bigger facility defines enrolment no matter the cost of enrolment. Parents can afford to pay up to a thousand United States Dollars for an academic year, only base on the school’s facility. On the other hand, parents will not be willing to pay even a hundred United States Dollars if the school has quality teachers but poor facilities. Only a few define quality as not being the buildings only, but the contents students learn as being also important; and those are the few that have gravitated towards us.  Revenue generated goes to salaries, books, girls pad, and other school overhead costs since we have to maintain best qualities of instructors to help us meet up with the business competition.

 Short Term goal- continue to raise enrollment for this academic year to minimum 75 girls, leading up to the second semester intake. Our strategy is to give out scholarships to needy girls who play sports and live in the school environment. This will help more kids to have access to enrollment during the second semester. More awareness about the school will be raised through this medium.

School Bus

We are still focused on obtaining a 16seated bus for the students’ transportation to and from school. This will help maintain the kids in school and also not just boost enrollment but increase our students’ completion rate.

Long term goal: Our long term goal is to construct a Lab-Based or Demonstration School as our high school. This will be the first of its kind in Liberia. Based on our research survey done in Montserrado County, where all of the sophisticated schools in Liberia are located, there are no full lab/demonstration based schools. Most schools have only a General Science Lab or a computer lab. There are no labs for Literacy, General Social Studies, and Mathematics Lab.  A lab-based or demonstration school gives students practical experience of what they read in the classes and connect them with real world experiences. It creates a deeper understanding of learning.

Conclusion

There’s no better way that we can thank you all at GlobalGiving than saying a huge “We Thank You.” We would not have reached this far without your drop of love and care. We close on a note of gratitude to everyone who has sent in their resources to reach our project to the level we are at. Thanks to GlobalGiving for affording us the space for such wonderful fundraising opportunity.

With gratitude,

Davidetta Togba Cassell

Executive Director & Project Lead

Links:

• nursery & Beginner Class demonstration time

Germinating Every Mind-Liberia's (GEM) and the Jennifer Albee Enrichment School extend their profound gratitude to GlobalGiving and all our generous donors for their continuous support to the girls of Liberia. GEM is pleased to present its quarterly report as part of GEM’s commitment to our GlobalGiving donors. This period's report covers from May 28 to September 22, 2024.

This new academic year marks the 5th academic year of the school’s operation since it was founded in 2020. A mixed emotions of success and challenges have propelled us into a new beginning with different shades of colors of brightness to step into the future. 

Huge Milestones
1. The Jennifer Albee Enrichment School concluded its fourth academic year with a total of 110 girls, 86 of whom performed exceptionally well in all divisions. As part of the closing exercise every school year, we celebrate students moving to the next academic division with a graduation exercise. This year a total of five kindergarteners will move on to the elementary class and six 6th graders will move on to the middle school class.

2. We have moved to a bigger and better facility

While we pursue our longer term goal to construct our own school campus, we were able to acquire a bigger and better facility to serve the growing needs and demand of our students and parents. Functioning in an urban community with competitive schools in the same environment, the need for a modern or bigger facility cannot be overlooked. While we have relocated, we are still within the same larger community, a 25 cents transportation fare from where we previously operated. With the proper renovations and upgrades on the newly acquired building, this new structure houses all of our classes from ECD through middle school classes within the building. At the previous location, the majority of the classrooms were in a tin-roof structure made of cement and bamboo. It was impossible to secure the building from theft and bad weather. The new location has improved the security of our furniture and supplies, and increased the durability too. Wonderful!

It’s unimaginable how much support we've gotten from the new community. There has been a huge turnout of volunteers during our outreach and awareness time. Also, the community leaders, especially the Youth Chairperson, Community Co-Chairperson, elders and a former Representative Aspirant have given us incredible support and motivation to continue doing what we do for girls. Our new School Administrator is a long-time serving principal of many schools located in our new community who resigned from his last job to come and commit to the work we do. Awesome!

3. More staff gain scholarly training

After many efforts to strengthen our human resource capacities, our School Administrator, Mr. Jonathan A. Earley was awarded a scholarship from the Kigali University in Rwanda to study Finance and Business Administration. He has departed and is expected to be back by the end of next year. Also, our Founder and Executive Director, Mrs. Davidetta Togba Cassell secured a two-year scholarship from USAID to study Education. She is currently enrolled at Liberia’s most prestigious teachers’ college ‘LICOSESS College of Education, studying Primary Education. Congratulations to both of them!

4. Girls-Speaker raised!

In Africa and Liberia, children public speakers, and particularly girls, are the rarest of things you will see. However, we have broken the ceiling with our strong emphasis in Literacy and are producing high-quality motivational speakers. After introducing our guest speaker, former Miss Liberia, Madam Bendu Parker-Weeks-Lewis, at our last graduation ceremony, one of our trained student speakers, Henrietta, was invited to serve as guest speaker at a Children’s Day Program at My God is Able Church. Henrietta amazed the audience with her skills! In total we can boast of raising 10 public speakers at the school.

5. Academic year 2024/2025 has commenced! 

On September 16, 2024, the new academic year commenced with 37 girls completing their registration process. From the look of things, nationally,  many children are likely to register very late into the first term due to high economic instability. Some may not enroll at all this academic year. This national crisis, combined with the challenge of establishing ourselves in the school’s new location, is impacting enrollment at Jennifer Albee Enrichment School. Our short-term goal is to raise enrollment for this academic year to a minimum of 75 girls. Our strategy is to give out 50 scholarships to needy girls for more kids to have access this year while raising more awareness about the school. We are also focused on obtaining a 16 seater bus for the students’ transportation to and from school. This will help boost and maintain enrollment once parents feel confident they can trust the safety of their children traveling to and from school.

Longer-term Goals:

We are poised to begin senior high school activities next year and are eager to commence. Within the next two to three years, our plan is to begin the gradual process of constructing our main campus along the new Johnsonville-White Plain Road.
 
Conclusion

Thanks, thanks and more thanks is all that we can say. To God who has granted us the will to do what we are doing and to all of our donors who have been a part of the impartations, thanks. We would not have reached this far without your drop of love and care. Like the song USA for Africa says, “We are the ones to make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.” You are saving a nation from poverty to sustainability through your support for girls’ education. “Oh send them your heart so they know that someone cares.” You all have sent us more than your hearts. Thanks for all the care you have shown the girls and people of Liberia. All of that can only happen through the support of our wonderful donors. For that, we again close on a note of gratitude to everyone who has sent in their resources to reach our project to the level we are at. Thanks to GlobalGiving for affording us the space for such wonderful fundraising opportunity.