What a fantastic day! We had a wonderful day today in Monrovia and Paynesville. The day started off with a meeting with our dear friend Archel Bernard at her office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Archel is doing a great job in her position with the Philanthropy Secretariat. Her office works with different NGOs and projects in Liberia - connecting funders with projects. From her office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we went down the road to the Hope for the Deaf School in Sinkor.
Hope for the Deaf is one of my absolute favorite places in Liberia. The school is housed on the Methodist Compound in Monrovia. There is a great video package on our website (www.loeproject.org) that our friend and video journalist Derick Snyder put together. The school includes grades Kindergarten through 9 with a vocational training program. The students are learning shoe making and tailoring. The tailoring component is new since our last visit. It was so wonderful to see the students again this year, working hard in their classes. They greeted us very warmly, signing excitedly. They were especially pleased that I could spell my name for them using ASL, and was eager to learn to spell (sign) each of their names.
After we left the Hope School, we continued down Tubman Boulevard to Paynesville, a suburb of Monrovia, to visit our friends at CRM. Children's Relief Ministry Orphanage was one of LOEP's first partners, one of our original partner schools. Things are progressing at CRM, the current project underway is a security wall around the property. The children and Matron greeted us very warmly and gave us a tour of the facility. We were particularly pleased to see the new tiled bathrooms at the orphanage, and renovated latrines. Some of the children we met during our first visit four years ago are still, and it is wonderful to see them as healthy teens and tweens now.
Our day continued as we visited the New Life School (previously called Christ Redeemer School). LOEP was introduced to the New Life School through on of our ToTs, Mr. Emmanuel Gbah. Mr. Gbah teaches adult literacy at the school, and is a member of the supporting church. Please read our previous blog entry dated April 6, 2011 for more information about this remarkable community school and the dedicated educators working there.
I would love to share more about each of these stops, but it has been an awfully long day, and I am pretty exhausted (mentallyy and physically). Will try to post pics tomorrow!
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