You are here » Home » Telling Our Story
Photo & Caption
Where There Are No Desks
Photo: Cynthia Mahoney/ DAI
Jubilant children in
Liberia’s coastal Sinoe
County help unload new
desks for their schools
delivered by fishing
boats and canoes. The
desks, made in Liberia,
were sponsored by
USAID in fulfillment
of a promise made on
a Presidential visit to
Liberia in 2008.
On his visit to Liberia in 2008, President
George Bush promised 10,000 desks from
the American people. USAID managed the
construction of the desks creating work for
Liberian carpenters and apprentices and
reducing the transport costs. One hundred
fifty six elementary, junior and senior high
schools in six of the most remote counties
in Liberia received desks for students and
teachers. Thirty Liberian micro-enterprises
participated in the production of the desks.
Liberia’s Ministry of Education identified
the counties and schools with the greatest
need.
The desks were necessary because
Liberia’s schools were badly pillaged
during the protracted years of war that
ended in 2003. Many children sit on floors or cartons, squeeze
onto benches, or sit two to a desk.
Delivering the new USAID-supplied desks to some remote areas,
inaccessible by roads or air, presented a logistical challenge and
required ingenuity and some unusual collaboration. Cestos City
in Sinoe County on Liberia’s southern coast along the Atlantic
Ocean was one of the areas designated to receive the school
desks and where local carpenters were engaged in the effort. As
desks were assembled they were stored at the local high school.
However, some of the recipient schools in nearby Yarnee District
are only reachable by crossing the Cestos River as there are no
passable roads or bridges. The UN peacekeeping force (UNMIL)
stationed in Cestos City provided a truck to transport the desks
to the river bank. A local fisherman provided two boats and a
principal from a recipient school lent a canoe. Across the Cestos
River, some 50 children from two recipient schools waited on
the beach to help carry the furniture back to their schools about
15 minutes down a foot path to the first school, and another 15
minutes to the second.
Because of this contribution from the American people
thousands of Liberian students now have a more conducive and
dignified learning environment—and no excuse not to study.
Print-friendly version of this page (533kb - PDF)
Click here for high-res photo
Back to Top ^ | 
RSS Feed for Recent Telling Our Story Updates
