Program Details: 
Strengthening Livelihoods and Building Peaceful Communities

Fourteen years of civil war turned Liberia into one of West Africa's most impoverished nations and left an entire generation of young people uneducated.

Since President Johnson Sirleaf took office in January 2006, Liberia has made progress: creating new jobs, repairing deteriorated infrastructure, rooting out government corruption, and increasing the standard of living. Mercy Corps has worked in Liberia since 2003, helping the Liberian people revive the agricultural production that is vital to their health, well-being and ability to support themselves.

Economic and Community Development
Years of war and neglect left rural Liberia economically depressed. Mercy Corps programs are helping to develop the country’s economy, with a focus on agriculture and infrastructure.

Cocoa Farming Brings Higher Income
Mercy Corps is working with the Liberia Produce Marketing Corporation and local farmers to rehabilitate an 80-acre cocoa farm. Participating farmers will learn improved cocoa cultivation techniques. They’ll also earn cash by working to clear the overgrowth that accumulated during the war years and strangled the cocoa trees. Our program creates new opportunities for cocoa farmers to increase their income, helping to transform a key economic sector. It also provides training to get youth and unemployed women involved in cocoa farming. More generally, it supports community development by providing a platform for business management training, marketing and sales techniques and micro-credit initiatives.

Improving Food Security
Mercy Corps is working to improve both short- and long-term food security in Liberia. Our programs focus on four areas:

• Boosting Agricultural Productivity
  To address some of the underlying causes of food insecurity in rural Liberia, Mercy Corps is helping farmers obtain higher crop yields. We’re providing more than 1,500 farmers with training opportunities and technical assistance so they can grow crops that meet the needs of local markets. We also provide the vital seeds and tools that help farmers increase their harvests. Mercy Corps also is investing in infrastructure, building small feeder roads and bridges that allow farmers to deliver their crops to market.




• Helping Farmers Access Financial Services
  Mercy Corps helps families in rural areas – where access to banks is severely limited – form saving groups so they can pool their savings and make small loans to one another. The groups help people withstand financial shocks and expand their income-generating activities; for instance, one member may borrow the funds to purchase a sewing machine and open a tailoring shop. Mercy Corps trains voluntary savings group participants how to run their Village and Savings Loan Associations.




• Increasing Availability of Clean Water
  Clean drinking water is essential to the body’s ability to utilize the nutrients in food. Mercy Corps employs skilled and local labor to build community wells and trains local groups to maintain them. And because proper hygiene is necessary to avoid disease, we’re also training communities in safe hygiene practices.




• Using Local Foods to Combat Malnutrition
  Mercy Corps is training mothers and other family members in proper feeding practices for malnourished children under the age of five. Our program draws on the experiences and practices of community caregivers whose children are well nourished, so as to teach their positive habits to others and encourage the use of locally available foods.

Community Peace Building
Mercy Corps’ five-year Community Peace Building and Development program has helped 50,000 people, through local organizations in 200 communities, achieve greater food security and play a larger role in governing their country.

Working with local Liberian partners and Community Development Committees, Mercy Corps helped people develop action plans for projects approved by their entire community. Participants learned conflict resolution and mediation techniques, and all community members had a chance to participate in decision-making.

As part of our Community Peace Building and Development program, Mercy Corps built 23 community radio stations that provide rural people with access to accurate news, educational programming and a message of peace – information that’s essential for local communities to take an active role in their own governance.

Empowering Youth for Life
During its two years of operations, Mercy Corps’ Youth Education for Life Skills (YES) program provided more than 13,000 youth aged 18 to 30, living in 358 communities, with literacy and life skills trainings. To reach so many young people was a significant achievement in war-torn Liberia, where communities are still recovering from years of conflict.

Youth from various backgrounds, ethnic groups and villages shared their experiences and received some of the education they were denied during the war years. They ran their own development clubs and activities such as intercommunity football tournaments, skills training workshops, leadership workshops, and HIV/AIDS education.