By Yvonne Capehart | Project Leader, Co-Director WE-CARE Foundation
Family Litercacy Initiative (FLI) a homebased early childhood education program with parents serving as the teachers of their children completed its nineth years with increase results on children school readiness. We extend our thanks to GlobalGiving and all our generous donors for their support to low-income families with out of school children ages 3 -5 years old living in Liberia.
We are please to report that FLI completed year nine with a total of 223 children (105 males and 118 females). Ninety (90) of the children have completed the three-year curriculum of the program. Closing programs are being held in the five communities of West Point, Caldwell, Duazon, Neezoe and Nyemah Town that are implementing the FLI program. The need for this program to be continued cannot be overemphasized. It is giving families living in extreme poverty the opportunity to change the future of their children.
Increase in Age-appropriate Enrollment
There was an increase in the rate of enrollment of FLI children in formal school from 60% in 2023/2024 academic year to 78% in 2024/2025 academic year. The number of FLI children enrolled in their appropriate age class has also increased by 40.8%. This can be partly contributed to the increase in writing activities added to the required skills and concepts that children are expected to develop for promotion to primary grade one in Liberia. The parents participating in FLI said the program is helping them to take a more active role in their children’s education. Parents are engaging with the schools and with the teachers on the learning outcomes of their children. We are pleased that parents are taking the initiative and are getting involved with the schools. We hope that in the coming program year, we can have greater parent engagement with the schools.
Adapted HIPPY Curriculum
The 3-year HIPPY curriculum contextualized for Liberia was used for the home instruction along with Liberian books. It was observed that parents and children had increase verbal discussions and interaction with the Liberian books. About 94.5% of the parents reported that the content of the books was easy to follow, and they had more things to talk to their children about because there are many things in the books that they can see around them. There is a need to include more Liberian books in the program.
Evidence of the Program Success
The FLI program has tracked four cohorts of graduates from the program in formal school. The first graduates of the program in 2018 are now in grades ranging from 4th to 9th grade.
Adult Literacy
The adult literacy component of the FLI program completed the year with 98 adult learners.
There are about 70% of the learners who are impressively responding to text messages from the ALP teachers and are reading at third and fourth grade levels, while the other 30% of the learners are struggling to read between kindergarten and first grade levels. With solar light provided by Friends of Liberia, the ALP classes in Marchee Town, one of the rural towns were conducted in the evenings when the people came home from their farms. Some learners reported that they are helping their older children with their schoolwork. While others claimed that they are helping their neighbor’s children with their schoolwork.
An adult learner was promoted to 5th grade in formal school. The teachers are praising his ability. This year is his second year attending regular school. ALP was his first school ever, and last year his first time ever sitting in a formal school classroom. We observed that younger adult learners are willing to go back to school.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centers
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centers constructed by self-help from community dwellers in two of the towns that have no school within 45 minutes walking distance to the nearest school have opened for the 2024/2025 academic year. There are 115 students ranging from nursery to kindergarten in the two rural towns participating in FLI under the rural community Nyemah Town. FLI Home Visitors are serving as the ECD teachers.
The challenge of access to primary school for the children to continue their education in these two towns remain the same. We are continuing our discussion with the Ministry of Education to assign a grade one teacher at the Marchee Town school for the academic 2024/25 year. A trained teacher is paid US$100.00 to USD$150.00 per month in Liberia.
This year we had unimaginable support from the community taskforce. The volunteer taskforce supported the program through continuous motivation of families, participating in all the program activities and creating awareness of the program in community and town hall meetings. We appreciate their efforts.
WE-CARE Foundation, Friends of Liberia, HIPPY International and all the families that are participating in the Family Literacy Initiative program would like to extend their thanks and appreciation to all the contributors. Your donations are helping a parent and child become literate and prepare for school and success for life-long learning. Please consider a donation today.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
