Red Cross graduates 198 women

The Liberia National Red Cross (LNRCS) has graduated 198 women, mostly from the slum community of West Point under a program called Women Training and Integration (WIN) Project.

The program, according to Red Cross has been helping mainly single mothers since 2009, with more than 1,202 beneficiaries from six slum communities in Montserrado County having graduated since the program was borne.

The latest WIN beneficiaries were trained in different areas including food nutrition, catering, tailoring and cosmetology, among others. In a keynote address at the graduation ceremony on Friday, 30 March a the Centennial Pavilion on Ashmum Street, Vice President Jewel Howard – Taylor observed that sadly, the families of today’s Liberia are made up of mostly single family heads of households which are females which may not have many role models.

But she told the graduates that every opportunity given to “each of us” is just [an] opportunity, saying what you do with it, how you utilize it for your own benefit will be your story and the story you will tell your children.

She admonished the graduates to exhibit good manners while running their businesses or working for others in restaurants or beauty saloon as a way of attracting customers and maintaining them.

She notes that it is the attitude of the gratefulness that will enable them to be a success story, saying if you have the right attitude; it speaks to who you are, your behavior, approach and manners which will open doors that one may not imagine.

She told the graduates that there is nothing sweeter than when you make your own money, adding that no man will tell them anything when they start to make their own money.

Also speaking at the program, LNRCS president Mr. Jerome Clark expressed hope that the graduates and their family members would take the inspiring message delivered by Vice President Taylor home and make it a part of their daily lives.

He expressed gratitude to partners for the support given the Red Cross to help women and young girls who were once abused, vulnerable and stigmatized.
Mr. Clark told the beneficiaries to be an example in the communities they live in like some of their colleagues who said they have become managers of their own businesses and got others working with them.

“Be an example in the communities you live [in] like your sisters you saw here. There’s no magic in being what they are today. Perhaps some of you can even go further and be better off than what they are,” Mr. Clark admonished the graduates.

By Winston W. Parley