The Liberia YMCA was founded in 1881 by Bishop Samuel D. Ferguson, while on assignment in Harper, Maryland County.
In 1926, the YMCA was extended to Monrovia, the capital city. Our mission is uniting and empowering young people through investing in programs that promote self-development and service to the community as an extension of the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We a vision of empowering young people for the African renaissance.
PROGRAMS
Our programs are divided into four programmatic themes; and each program delivers a range of developmental actions that are socially relevant to young people and their communities.
GOVERNANCE
- Leadership Training and Mentoring
- Civic Education
- Peace Building & Advocacy
- Community Leadership Forums
EMPLOYMENT
- Skills Training
- Business Management Training
- Business Grants/Loans provisions
- Agriculture
- Career Development
HEALTHY LIVING
- Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness
- Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
- Alcohol and Drug Awareness
- Sport, Fitness and Recreation
EDUCATION
- Formal Secondary School
- Informal Education
- Reading and Literacy
- Program Computer Literacy
- Tertiary Education (Polytechnic)
Liberia is a youthful populated country with over 60% young people. The Economic situation in Liberia is disheartening with many citizens living on less than a dollar a day. The nation is underdeveloped, with limited access to electricity [even in the capital], pipe born water etc. There is limited political will by duty bearers to address the issue of digital equity in Liberia, only few privileged young people, needless to mention persons with disabilities, have access to digital platform for learning. In Liberia there is limited access to like internet, many graduates from higher institutions are not computer literate; majority of those who are computer literate are also new to online learning.
We will therefore be targeting underprivileged young people, person with disabilities, girls and women.
The HP LIFE-YMCA partnership is a glorious opportunity for the young people and disadvantaged individuals in Liberia. The impact will be experienced on the individual level as well as the community level. The YMCA-HP Partnership effort is to create learners who are equipped with accurate, objective and scientific knowledge, attitudes and value enhanced Life Skills. These will help young learners to make informed decisions, solve problems, think creatively and critically, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, cope with challenges and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner. With these wonderful objectives of the partnership, the impact of the project on the life of the participants, to some extent, will bring about change and transformation.
The outcome and impact experience of the project will be no less the than the experience of Benedict, as he narrates his excitement below:
I am Benedict O. Saingbe II, have a certificate in Computer hardware and I am currently working with YMCA of Liberia Polytechnic College.
After I graduated from High School in 2012 and didn’t know what to do next.I decided to do computer hardware and right after that I landed my first job with the YMCA. After volunteering for some time, and being a novice to the professional world, I had to link with someone with experience to guide me through.
I was not also versatile in a lot of other things and activities; I always was waiting to execute instructions from others and was apprehensive to take the lead in anything I was doing. I began to feel afraid and worried about my ability to be successful..
But that dramatically changed after the HP LIFE program was introduced to us by Mr. Daniel W. Kollie. I can still remember when Mr. Kollie told us to make use of the HP LIFE Training courses and that it was free. There and then I didn’t hesitate to log onto the website and begin going through the program, but one program actually caught my attention, and the program is the HP LIFE Effective Leadership Course.
The HP LIFE Leadership training has caused a major turnaround in my day-to-day routine, I make suggestions when I see things that are not going right and try to find remedies in solving such issues. , I am also currently working along with Mr. Kollie on the HP LIFE Project.
I am happy today because with the HP LIFE Leadership training I am abe to understand that I don’t need to be a supervisor or director to make positive decision, but now I am a leader who can make decisions to better myself and my institution. Because of the interest I have developed in the HP LIFE courses, I have now completed 25 of the 32 courses. Thank You so much HP LIFE for such a great opportunity.
That is the story of Benedict, and many such stories will follow as we conduct the training. However, I must admit that it took us some time to upgrade our computer labs in preparation for this project; therefore, we just started the training activities this week with the first 150 young people. With the level of excitement, we are expected to go above 200 before the end of the piloting. The pictures below show young people in training for the first week.
. 
. 