Post War Development; Education and Women

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Today we met with some various organizations of the Lutheran Church, including the Supervisor of the Lutheran School System, the Head of Christian Education, head of youth ministry the President and secretary of The Womens’ Ministry, Head of Urban Ministry, and The Lutheran Bishop.

It was a day filled with alot of facts and statistics. Some uniting threads of all the conversations were: 1) The destruction and devastation that the war caused 2) The move from relief to development and in tandem the attempts to rebuild infrastructure and capacity 3) Education and 4) Female Empowerment/the role of woman/gender equality in Liberia.

The education system was particulary interesting to learn about. The Lutheran School system, runs from Sept -June, (a shift from what they did before, pre-war; March to December). Kids start around age 4 to 5, and can continue until they are 26 for highschool. The Lutheran School Sytem is $150 U.S. Dollars a year and is partially subsidized by the government. There is also a Free Public School System; while free, school is not compulsory, and there is a greater amount of kids that DON'T go, then DO go. Prior to the war education was regarded more highly and had more flexible options, like night school and so forth, unfortunately now things have gone downhill. Most Liberians, the Head of the Education Department told us, A) need their children to work and B) Feel girls and boys should follow the typical road to adulthood which involves the typical rites of passage. The Sandi, a "secret society" as he described it, trains young girls and boys for 3months- a year in traditional African Skills in an attempt to prepare them for adulthood. While it may be easy to suggest that school be made compulsory in order to get a greater number of children educated, they lack the resources and there are simply not enough schools to provide for all the children. What was also fascinating was religious education, The head of the Christian Education Department mentioned that the Lutheran as well as the public schools provide a broad religious education that invovles instruction about multiple religions.

Liberia is also making waves in gender equality. This was particulary evident during the war, but continues now. For those that are unaware, a Peace Movement called "Women of Liberia Mass Action For Peace" was absolutely pivotal in helping to end the war. They became a force agaisnt the current government and violence. Upset that their brothers, husbands and children were being killed thousands of women (of multiple religions, Muslim, Christian, etc) came together in silent protests demanding that peace talks be held. This movement more or less led to the current President (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's election), a female president (the first head of state in ALL of Africa) that is widely well regarded making huge strides in Liberia. The Lutheran Women's Ministry was also informative. As Rev Stevens, very smoothly put it, as way of introduction: "The Women are the Heart of Man" and are integral to helping the church's heartbeat. Rose, Secretary of the Women's Auxiliary told us that 97% of the Lutheran Church in Liberia is made up of Women (The Reverend in the room quickly tried to say it is closer to 85%). Whatever the case may be a great percentage of the Church is made up of females. They are the primary teachers of Sunday School are working to create a day care center and are working hard to help redefine family ties. Rose told us that prior to the civil war families were extremely tight, post war family ties dissolved. Teenage motherhood is an ongoing problem, informal marriages typical happen around 14 or 15, and alot of women have at least 5 children from multiple partners by age 25. This effects efforts at education and while counseling is provided by the Luteran Church to help young mothers go back to school, the government currently does not have the social service resources/money to allocate services to the poor.

Plenty of other information was supplied, Ill try to provide more later. On a less instructive not we had coconuts last night, a great rather traditional Liberian Meal, and did a little shopping!

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Comments

[Aunt Stacie]

hello
Thanks for the commentary... SO informative...