Re-Building Education from Scratch

As early as 2005 LOEP began considering requests to go to Liberia and work with our teacher colleagues there. It was not until 2009 that the first team actually went but for the four years between, LOEP volunteers studied everything we could find about education in Liberia both pre-war and post-war. We talked at length with our Liberian board members and friends and conducted a Needs Assessment at our partner schools to determine their professional development needs. The fairly intensive preparation and research made us feel well-prepared as we set off for our first training trip… well, it was a bit helpful, anyway.


Our goal is to continue making our training workshops and professional development assistance as relevant and useful as it can be for Liberian teachers. Liberia is moving forward fast so we have to keep up. While nothing quite substitutes for on-the-ground experience, we keep in close contact with our colleagues and maintain updates from other sources as new information becomes available on education in Liberia.


It occurred to me, because of the many questions we get when we talk about LOEP, that some who read this blog may find it interesting to keep up along with us. From time to time – as something particularly interesting or relevant comes up - I will post about education in Liberia from a broad perspective and post some links to source material, reports, etc. That may give our own LOEP projects some context and also provide some insight on life in Liberia as the country re-builds.


A couple of good places to start:

http://www.liberianeducationtrust.org/

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/liberia_52380.html
More next week...