Youth Empowerment Through Education

Action Against Societal Ills-ACASI is a Non-Governmental, Non-political, Non-religious, Non-ethnic organization located in the slum community of Clara Town, Montserrado County, Republic of Liberia. ACASI seeks to protect the most vulnerable population against human rights violations, educational malpractices, unemployment, underemployment, bad governance as well as corruption and promotes social and economic justice. The Republic of Liberia is a West African country bordered by Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Atlantic Ocean. Liberia has about 111,300 square kilometers (43,000 sq. mi) of land with an estimated population of 4.98 million many of whom is youths (76%). This compares to the 2008 census population of 3.47 million. Of this last official population report, 1.1 million people lived in Montserrado County, which is the most populous county and home to the capital, Monrovia. The Greater Monrovia area is home to about 25% of Liberia's total population. This region is composed of seventeen (17) districts. According to the UNDP Human Development Index Report of 2017, Liberia’s HDI value for 2017 is 0.435—which puts the country in the low human development category—positioning it at 181 out of 189 countries and territories thereby ranking the country as one of the poorest Nations on Earth wit 83.8 percent of population below international poverty line of US$1.25 per day and per capita income of 880 US$. This area is recurrently hit by food deficit mainly because of population pressure, erratic nature of youth employment; lack of capacity building skills initiatives, lack of innovative entrepreneurial activities and so on. Regarding social services coverage, these communities are backward. The primary enrollment ratio doesn't exceed 70% while that of secondary education is 15.6%. According to UNESCO, Liberia has an adult literacy rate of 42.94%. While the male literacy rate is 60.77%, for females is 27.03%, showing a big gap between the sexes. Compared to the rest of other countries, Liberia has a low literacy rate; ranking Liberia at 109th position out of 119 countries. Nearly 60% of the population is illiterate in Liberia. The health coverage of this part of the world is very low with only 10% of the country’s GDP spent on health leaving 0.01 physicians/1,000 populations and 0.8 beds/1,000 populations respectively. While more than 24.4%% of the population suffers from the lack of clean and safe drinking water. Clara Town and Doe Communities are two densely populated slum communities of more than 406,371 residents according to the 2008 census. Out of this population, more than 70% are youth. These two communities have numerous socioeconomic problems such as poverty, poor infrastructure, unemployment, poor social services and social ills. These make the two communities to be incompatible with the booming population that is hungry for these services. Young population is becoming dominant population group in these communities. This group is also the most affected group of society by the above stated socio–economic constraints. The young sects of society in these communities are alarmingly increasing from time to time. Because of these high priority challenges, the poverty rate is horrible in these slum communities and there have been dramatic shifts of migration among youths to other areas in search of better life, education, quality health care and other services. Second, Clara Town and Doe Communities are located in strategic positions on the Bushrod Island with main roads and highways crossing it in remarkable directions namely Somalia Drive, proximity to the main capital of Liberia, inter-connectedness of the two communities by the newly constructed paved road, nearness to the main port of Monrovia. The accessibilities of these communities have resulted in high mobility of population from different directions to these two communities. Third, there are major government institutions, different offices and highly economic activities to which many youth come to fetch for education, business and other reasons. These all have resulted in high unemployment and juvenile delinquency.