Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund transforms

The tax exempt entity known as the Sirelaf Market Women’s Fund has transitioned to the Sustainable Market Women’s Fund (SMWF) with the outgoing president of the Liberia Marketing Association, Lusu Sloan, appointed as Executive Director.

The transformation was announced at the 61st session of the Commission on Status of Women in New York, thereby taking effect as of April.

Madam Sloan takes over the SMWF with a mission to promote education, entrepreneurship, health and agriculture while its Board of Directors chaired by Madam Olivia Shannon will be reconstituted as the governing body.

The organization’s office has also been relocated to the Jorkpen Town Market, one of the markets initially renovated under the program. The SMWF formerly the Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund was named in honor of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf whose grandmother was believed to be a market woman.

Reasons for the transformation was not clear but the Board of Directors praised the accomplishments made in the last 10 years and announced that the archives of the Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund were being transferred to the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, a division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Archives in the United States.

The Board recognized the successes of the organization during the Ebola crisis for which the post-Ebola era is now being documented, including literacy training and engagement of market women as change agents in their respective communities towards support from the UN Women Fund for Gender Equality and the African Women’s Development Fund.

-Editing by Jonathan Browne