PHOTO: Madam Davidetta Togba Cassell
By Moses M. Tokpah, mosesmtokpah@gmail.com
The founder of Germinating Every Mind Liberia (GEM-Liberia, which is a local NGO founded to empower women and girls, has sent out an urgent appeal for technical and logistical support. to her institution as well as other institutions that are empowering young people in Liberia.
Making a passionate plea for assistance recently, GEM-Liberia’s Founder, Davidetta Togba Cassell said her institution set out to empower women and girls through vocational skills training since 2011. And this program has been upgraded, but in order to beef up their activities, they need support from local and international organizations.
The institution was initially called Girls Education Movement Liberia. But when its activities began to expand in other directions and include males, the name then changed to Germinating Every Mind Liberia, thus playing host to young boys, girls, older women and older men in the vocational education section, Madam Cassell explained.
GEM-Liberia is now operating an all-girls academic and technical training center named and styled Jennifer Enrichment School in Kebah, Barnersville Township, outside Monrovia.
The head of institution recently told this Reporter that there is a need for the Ministry of Education to be able to help institutions like GEM-Liberia that are empowering young people and see those instructions as partners in progress.
Madam Cassell stressed the need to empower young people because this is the only way forward for the redemption of Liberia.
She said there are times that the Ministry of Education need to provide opportunities for people if the opportunities exist and see how more attention can be paid to the empowerment of young people by subsidizing programs like hers that are helping people in the communities.
According to her, not everyone will have the opportunity to go to academic school or have the ambition and passion for academic school, but everyone wants to learn something else.
GEM-Liberia, Madam Cassell said is in need of technical and logistical support to enhance its operation.
She explained that the vocational section of the institution is in need of hair dressing materials, catering materials and tailoring machines amongst others while the academic section needs teachers to ease the burden on the school and to make work more effective.
The lady disclosed that GEM-Liberia cannot also meet up with the growing demand of students wanting to acquire tailoring knowledge.
She mentioned that many people want to be tailor but the institution has just 13 machines that they service every now and then.
The GEM-Liberia Boss averred that the institution is offering all of its programs on a free of charge basis, adding that it saw the need to help people who are adults and don’t have anything to make a living out of it in their various communities.
She said at the level of the technical school, each student is required to pay just L$2,000 for a t-shirt and application form thereafter go through six months of intensive training.
Additionally, she narrated that the academic section is tuition free, but the kids who undergo academic and vocational trainings are required to pay a fee of US$100 which covers uniform cost (five sets of uniform), feeding, gala week activities and community services.
She stated that it is challenging for the institution to train about 35 persons free of charge and pay the teachers on its own expense.
Davidetta Togba Cassell furthered that people have made promises to the institution and have not been able to live up to one percent of those promises.
The Lady said she sees it as a political game on the part of politicians who make promises and cannot live up to them, noting that at the time they (politicians) need the Liberian people it is when they give handout.
“That is not the way of development and empowerment, so even you were running a campaign; the best campaign will be how many persons have you empowered, how many persons have you made self-reliant because you cannot continue to give handout and you cannot give handout to everybody. Everyone who was to come to your party you will not be able to sponsor people in their homes, it’s not your responsibility to sponsor people, it’s your responsibility to make good law to provide the avenue where people can have equal access to empowerment,” she lamented.
Madam Cassell intoned that they are looking at the future where women have to be empowered and be able to be self-reliant to take care of their own needs.
“No matter who you are, where you come from; everyone needs to be empowered, and that has been our motivation to allowing people to come,” she concluded.