An Appeal for Help in Liberia
2012 LTI Re-roofing Project bulletin insert (PDF)
In early 2012, the Upper Susquehanna Synod plans to send another volunteer mission team to Liberia. Its task will be two-fold: re-roofing and general renovation of faculty and staff houses on the campus of the Lutheran Training Institute [LTI] and, secondly, upgrading the vocational skills of the Liberian teachers on the LTI faculty.
LTI, roughly 200 miles in the interior of Liberia, is a large campus with many buildings that include faculty houses, classrooms, library, guest house, dormitories and chapel/auditorium.
It was built in the 1952-58 as a boarding high school for academically gifted Liberian students and children of missionaries. Its curriculum then was based on a Western-oriented, classical education. In its prime (in the 1960s to 1980s), it was considered by many to be the best high school in Liberia. Many of its graduates went on to colleges either in Liberia or abroad. A significant number of today’s political, economic, and professional leaders are LTI graduates. The most widely known is Dr. Walter Gwenigale, former chief surgeon/medical director at Phebe Hospital and currently Minister of Health in the cabinet of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Like so much of Liberia’s infrastructure, LTI suffered badly during the disastrous civil war of 1989-2003. As the students fled, rebel fighters from various warring factions trying to seize hold of the Liberian government sacked the campus multiple times, carrying away anything and everything of value. Even roofs were disassembled and hauled away as loot to be sold in distant marketplaces. All of LTI’s buildings were trashed and left as window-less, roof-less, door-less and furniture-less empty shells. The immediate postwar scene resembled a desolate ghost-town.
Following the civil war, the Church of Sweden and the Danish Evangelical Mission provided funds to rebuild part of the campus, including the chapel/auditorium, the classrooms, the guest house, and the director’s home. But the interior walls of several former faculty homes still point forlornly to the sky, without roofs. Deterioration of these walls occurs during the rainy season as long as there are no overhead roofs. Our best guess is that it will take several years and roughly $35,000 to complete this re-roofing and renovation work. HOW CAN YOU HELP? (PDF)
What is the future of LTI? Why all this rebuilding? Since 2003, LTI has transitioned into a vocational school and it is the dream of LCL Bishop Sumoward Harris that the school eventually gain recognition as an accredited technical junior college or community college for ex-fighters and other upcountry youth, similar to the Booker T. Washington Institute which caters to young people from Monrovia and other coastal towns.
As buildings are repaired, students from the area and ex-combatants (including former child soldiers) have enrolled in various technical subjects as teachers can be found. Agriculture, fish farming, auto mechanics, animal husbandry, plumbing, electricity, carpentry, furniture-building, accounting, and home economics are subjects currently being offered to the 200+ boarding students of both sexes. There is also a K through 12 day school which “feeds” young people into the vocational program.
A small but dedicated all-Liberian teaching staff is in place. These teachers live on-site in very inadequate quarters; they receive little if any salaries. They eat most of their meals, cafeteria-style, with the students. As instructors, they have little access to teaching materials or equipment. So they must make do with what they have. To gain eventual accreditation, they will need much more in the way of instructional materials and equipment. They’ll also need to have their own vocational skills upgraded. So the volunteers we’re seeking for our 2012 work-team include those who are willing to “teach the teachers” in their own technical area, as well as construction volunteers assisting in the renovation and re-roofing projects.
Further information is available from Bob Bradford @ (570) 473-9505 or bradford@evenlink.com.
