Monrovia — Liberia's unrivaled youth-led education NGO has completed intensive training in Basic Education and Work Ready Now for 26 facilitators under The Youth Advance (TYA) project.
According to Sir Urias W. Brooks, Jr. Founder/CEO, UMOVEMENT, the organization is implementing TYA activities in Montserrado and Grand Bassa counties, targeting 275 through two pathways:
Pathway 1 (200 youths) - aims to build the literacy, numeracy, work readiness, and life skills of learners who have never attended school or who have been out of school for extended periods of time. Core competencies in basic, functional literacy and numeracy are being built through a basic education curriculum that lasts for 240 hours, delivered 4 days a week over a period of the first 5 months, (192 hours) and 1 day a week over a period of the last 5 months (48 hours). Work readiness and life skills topics are covered in Work Ready Now which is delivered for 2 hours per day, 4 days per week over a 5-month period (160 hours).
Pathway 2 (75 youths) - for those youth who have already achieved foundational literacy and numeracy skills and need to gain important work-readiness and soft skills. The TYA WRN integrated curriculum covers the following topics: mental health (foundations of resilience); soft skills (personal development, communication skills, leadership, finding and keeping work, digital literacy); entrepreneurship training (Be Your Own Boss); and physical health (sexual and reproductive health, preventable diseases, gender-based violence, substance abuse). This curriculum lasts 200 hours, delivered 4 days a week for 4 hours/day for a period of 3 months.
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TYA supports the Government of Liberia and supports Youth-Serving Local Organizations (YSLOs) to support market-driven, locally relevant educational and training opportunities to prepare over 21,000 young people ages 15 - 29, with the skills, experience, support, and relationships to productively engage with their local economies. Activities will focus on developing the basic education and foundational skills of youth, strengthening employment skills for improved livelihoods, and supporting the creation of an enabling environment for improved youth productivity.
USAID Youth Advance is a five-year program (2021-2026) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in three counties (Montserrado, Grand Bassa, and Lofa) and UMOVEMENT-Liberia is partnering with Education Development Center (EDC) for its implementation.
The Youth Advance project brings to two the number of USIAD-sponsored projects being implemented by UMOVEMENT simultaneously. The first was the Elections and Democracy Activity (EDA), which is supporting the Ministry of Education's rollout of the 2014 National Curriculum on Citizenship Education.
UMOVEMENT's emerging eminence in Liberia's education sector is traced from the Supporting Effective Advocacy in Liberia (SEAL) Project, sponsored by the European Union and Irish Aid - managed by Mercy Corps.
