252 youth recruited in Maryland

A team from the Liberia Agency for Community Empowerment or LACE and the Ministry of Youth and Sports is presently in Maryland County, southeast Liberia to recruit beneficiaries under the productive public work sub-component of the Youth Opportunity Project.

Speaking in an interview with the New Dawn correspondent in Harper City, Maryland, the Ministry of Youth and Sports monitoring and evaluation officer Emmanuel Carto says the project will work with vulnerable youths in Harper, Karluway, and Barrobo districts, respectively in the area of agriculture.

He says three communities have been selected in each of the districts with each community constituting 28 youths. He explains that they will undertake communal farming on 35 acres of land already provided by those communities.

The Youth Opportunity Project is a government-run program aimed at improving income generating opportunities of vulnerable youths through agriculture and life skills training in all 15 counties of Liberia.

The five years project, supported through a loan agreement from the World Bank, is expected to benefit 700 youths between ages 18 and 35 in Maryland County.

Some of the targeted beneficiaries Patrick Neufville, Francis Weah, and Nymeday Collins laud the LACE, Ministry of Youth and Sports, and the World Bank for providing such opportunity that will enable them acquire status, but challenge the three institutions to do more, lamenting that many of their colleagues are vulnerable in the community.

Unemployment among young people with limited or no skills at all is a serious challenge in Liberia that the country’s outgoing government was unable to surmount despite public promises, and is waiting to greet the incoming administration led by President-elect, George Weah, who heavily drew his support for the Presidency from youth from slum communities.

By George K. Momo/ Maryland-Editing by Jonathan Browne