Teaching children to read is critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and investing in a future where every life matters. RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA helps meet the needs of disadvantaged children in the country's remote Kolahun District. RESTORE HOPE will train 6 tutors in phonics-based literacy instruction. The tutors will provide focused after-school literacy instruction to 100 children - improving their fundamental skills, boosting their confidence, and offering them a life-changing opportunity.
60% of Liberians are illiterate. Twenty years of civil war and the worst Ebola epidemic in history have devastated Liberia's school system. Most young people cannot read or write at their grade level, if at all, and few Liberian instructors have the skills to effectively teach literacy. Disadvantaged children-orphaned, disabled, chronically ill-are more likely to escape poverty if they are skilled and educated.
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA's staff of 6 tutors will complete a literacy-instruction training program. The tutors will then assess the literacy level of 100 RESTORE HOPE students, who will then be grouped according to skill level. Tutors will employ their newly acquired skills, including phonics, to boost the youth's reading levels. They will also use culturally-relevant reading materials, e-readers and other effective literacy tools and methods.
Training after-school tutors in phonics-based literacy will dramatically improve a District's entire education system by bringing expert resources into the community. Not only will 100 children in various schools directly benefit from literacy instruction, trained tutors will go on to lead a Training of Trainers with teachers across the District, sharing their newly acquired knowledge with instructors within the schools. For the children, it will be life-changing.
