How RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA is responding...
We are one of the only humanitarian aid organizations remaining in rural Lofa county. We must respond to the health crisis that the current pandemic now presents in Liberia.
 
Here’s what RHL is doing:

• Continuing to pay all staff, despite suspension of some activities such as the afterschool tutoring program.
• Supporting our staff in practicing preventive measures while they continue critical work by making home visits to vulnerable children in the community.
• Increasing the amount of direct cash transfers from $10 per month to $20 per month per household.
• Setting up support to our peer-to-peer health counselors to provide prevention messaging to the community while practicing physical distancing.
• Making a distribution of books for children to have learning materials at home while out of school, at the same time providing children and caregivers with preventive messaging about staying safe during the pandemic.
• Raising funds to supply two hospitals, Kolahun District Hospital and the Foya-Borma Hospital, with essential medicine and supplies as they face a looming catastrophe.

​In the midst of uncertainty and loss, you CAN do something to ease the suffering. Please consider donating to provide hospitals in rural Liberia with basic medicine and supplies.

We are all witnessing what this pandemic can do to health systems of various capacities around the world.

Imagine the scale of mortality that could befall a country that has scant resources. These two hospitals support a population of over 170,000. THERE IS NOT ONE VENTILATOR, NOT ONE MASK, NOT ONE PAIR OF EXAM GLOVES IN STOCK. THE PHARMACY SHELVES ARE EMPTY. Even basic items are needed—soap, hand sanitizer, bleach and other cleaning supplies, and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to protect the lives of our hospital staff.

They are doing what they can: setting up handwashing stations around the hospital and putting in place some measures learned from the Ebola epidemic such as screening points and isolation units.

Without more support, the number of deaths will be astounding.​

Your donation will SAVE LIVES.

​Ms. Blama’s story is one of resilience, of finding hope.
 
Like most Liberians, she was just a child when the war broke out. During the war, in hopes of surviving, she fled into “the bush”, the untamed lands of Liberia’s tropical forest. During those 14 long years of an intensely brutal war, she bore children.
 
The very day she delivered triplets, she was raped repeatedly by rebel forces.
 
She was then captured by the rebels and held as a prisoner. She escaped once, but unsuccessfully. They “chopped” her, as she describes her own experience. She finally escaped into Sierra Leone becoming a refugee. She eventually made her way back to Liberia but remained living in the bush with her children. She was too traumatized to re-enter society.
 
When RESTORE HOPE learned of Ms. Blama, our team in Kolahun brought her into the community. With ongoing psychosocial counseling, Ms. Blama is finding a new way forward.
 
As she says, she can now “go amongst her friends”. 
 
With RESTORE HOPE’s intervention and ongoing support, she now counsels other women who’ve gone through such trauma.
 
Her children are attending school and she’s become a weaving instructor in the Women’s Weaving Cooperative, supported by RHL. We are proud to know her.
 
Your financial contribution will help others, like Ms. Blama, find a new way forward. Join our community, become part of Restore Hope’s family of donors, and give a most meaningful gift this season.

Children need to play. 
 
For children to reach their fullest physical, emotional and spiritual development, play is critical. Children who don’t play, don’t thrive. This is especially true for children who have suffered through war, natural disasters, epidemics, death and loss, and separation from loved ones. Even in survival, their lives have been forever changed.
 
There are no toys or games in places like Liberia, where the opportunities to play are often non-existent. But kids are amazingly inventive: A tightly wrapped ball of rags can become a soccer ball, a simple barrel hoop or old bike wheel, plus a stick, becomes a classic hoop-and-stick toy. And for some kids we see in Liberia, an empty tin can tied to a long piece of string becomes a favorite pull-toy. Imagination does the rest.

​And for kids like Manbu, a 10-year-old 5th grader, imagination knows no bounds.  The first thing you notice about Manbu is his drive to invent and create. Whenever we see him, he seems to have a new toy or other creation, made from found materials - recycled sticks and twigs, plastic bottles, string and wire, an old broken LED flashlight, taken apart and repurposed.  From what you or I would regard as junk or trash emerge a helicopter, a toy truck with electric lights, a bench and table for his mother, a solar-powered cooking stove.
 
Appropriately, Manbu’s favorite subjects at school are math and science. “I like to fix things,” he told us, “and I want to be an engineer.”  How did he learn to connect the batteries to the lights on his truck? “On my own,” he said matter-of-factly. 
 
So far, Manbu’s world does not extend beyond Kolahun. But he hopes one day to go away to college and become an engineer. And after that? “I want to come back to help my mom, brother, and sister, and also my community.”​

Perhaps Manbu will be one of those who get the lights back on in Kolahun, solarizes the wells and pump stations, and builds the new irrigation and flood control systems.  There are many bright, young minds like Manbu in Liberia, and poverty should not be a deterrence for them to reach their full potential.
 
Shyly, near the end of our interview with Manbu, he wondered aloud if RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA might help him go to college one day.​

​60% of Liberians are illiterate. Twenty years of civil war and the worst Ebola epidemic in history have devastated Liberia's school system. Most young people cannot read or write at their grade level, if at all, and few Liberian instructors have the skills to effectively teach literacy. Disadvantaged children-orphaned, disabled, chronically ill-are more likely to escape poverty if they are skilled and educated.

​Training after-school tutors in phonics-based literacy will dramatically improve a District's entire education system by bringing expert resources into the community. Not only will 100 children in various schools directly benefit from literacy instruction, trained tutors will go on to lead a Training of Trainers with teachers across the District, sharing their newly acquired knowledge with instructors within the schools. For the children, it will be life-changing.

Construction of the Vocational Education & Training (VET) center is 99% complete! The final step is the installation of water and sanitation facilities, for which we are currently comparing bids from local companies. We anticipate this will be completed by the summer’s end. 
 
Our office, library, and tutoring classes will be moving into the building in the coming months. The VET will also house the Women’s Weaving Cooperative. The weavers can now set up their looms under cover, just as the rainy season begins.
 
The community is excited about their new space…and so are we! Thank you to everyone who donated to make this happen. In particular, we want to thank the people of the German Democratic Republic who, through a grant from the German Embassy in Monrovia, made construction of the VET possible. Vielen danken! 

May 2018
Inside the sweltering rental car, Juliana sits wedged between her parents in the rear seat. The vehicle zigs and zags along the bumpy road, trying to avoid the large pot holes. No one speaks. We pass small villages of one-room, mud-brick houses with warped, rusty metal roofs. The landscape alternates between remnants of rainforest, parcels of land cleared for cultivation, and tidy groves of rubber trees and African oil palms.

Juliana is thirteen years old. Her stern gaze is fixed on the road ahead. Her facial expression is blank. There is not the hint of a smile.

What is she thinking?  What is she feeling?

Juliana is at the heart of this 45-minute trip from Kolahun District to Voinjama: She is deaf. 

In recent months, both James Kpangbai, RHL’s Field Coordinator, and Margret Gieraths-Nimene, RHL’s then Country Program Director, have been exploring suitable schooling options for Juliana. In Liberia, schools for the deaf are rare. Although RHL has supplied Juliana and her family with sign language books and although she’s enrolled in a conventional local school, it’s clear she needs more resources. 

A nun, Sister Ann Kelly, had recently told James about a new school for the deaf in Voinjama. Today we’re going with Juliana and her parents to visit this school.

In Voinjama, we stop to get final directions to the school. I catch a glimpse of Juliana; her face still emotionless. Is she nervous? Scared?  Apprehensive? Excited? Unsure? Eager? Reluctant?

March 2019
It’s been seven months since Juliana enrolled at the Voinjama Academy for the Deaf. James in Kolahun has called to tell me he’s sent photos of some of RHL’s beneficiaries, including Juliana.

I open the file of photos and read the first caption: “Juliana and her school mates.” She has friends, she is connected to the world through relationships. And she’s smiling! A sign of HOPE.  

​It is with great sadness that we report the death of our friend and brother, Francis Kanneh, on January 31, 2019. Francis was a teacher who for the past several years served as RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA's head tutor and head of our after-school tutoring and adult literacy programs. In spite of increasing health challenges, Francis was ever present, always with an easy smile, always helpful no matter the task. He was courageous and dedicated and was beloved by the children, the RHL families, and his friends and colleagues.
 
Francis was originally from the Vahun District of Liberia; he grew up and attended primary and secondary school in Kailahun, Sierra Leone. He received his initial teachers’ certificate from Bonumbu Teacher’s College in Sierra Leone. Later, after two years at the International Rescue Committee’s Refugee School in Kountaya, Guinea, during the Liberian Civil War, he earned a Diploma for teaching the Integrated Course of Study based on the Secondary School Curricula for Liberia & Sierra Leone.
 
After the war, Francis returned to Kailahun where he taught at St. Joseph’s Primary School for 7 years, and then for another 3 years at the Musu Kanneh Public School in Kolba City, Kolahun, Lofa County, Liberia.
 
Poor health forced Francis into an early “retirement” from public school teaching but did not slow him down much. He joined RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA in 2013 and continued his teaching and meeting with our many students, parents and caregivers, and many area teachers and school principals. His responsibilities as our “Principal” included assessing student needs and coordinating our tutorial curriculum with the curriculum in more than a dozen different schools in the Kolahun District.
 
RHL and the Kolahun community have lost a friend and dedicated teacher. But we are heartened that Francis' spirit and determination live on in the members of the communities we serve who will take this work forward. His memory prompts us all to rededicate our efforts.
 
To all our friends and colleagues: you may not have known Francis, but when you see his work, see him in action among the vulnerable kids and families of Kolahun, in rural Lofa County, Liberia, you will recognize the face of dedication and service, compassion and resilience, a man who was gentle yet strong and determined. And you'll see the work of recovery and development based on a holistic, community-centered, grassroots model that has emerged in the aftermath of war and disease.
 
We hope you’ll enjoy this short video vignette of Francis' work and time with RHL in Kolahun.

Dear Colleague,
​
For the past 12 years, I have worked as a physician providing humanitarian aid in response to complex emergencies — war and post-conflict contexts, disease outbreaks, natural disasters — in settings as diverse as Liberia, the Sudan/Darfur/Eastern Chad region, Ethiopia, Libya and Afghanistan. I have come to admire and love the people I have encountered for their courage and resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges and suffering.

These challenges test the capacity of every humanitarian worker to meet the needs of those they serve. And for millennia this work has challenged the healer, as it challenges me now, with the question, “How shall I respond to the suffering in the world?” The work you are learning about now is, in part, my response.

Through my work, one thing has become abundantly clear: When the emergency is over, there is no greater gift that we can give than to assist communities in grass-roots development, empowering them to rebuild the healthcare, water & sanitation, education and economic development systems that will take them into the future. This is not “aid” in the traditional sense, which often fosters dependency and corruption. Community development is transformative, giving people the ability to become their own agents of change. Such communities are healthy, productive, equitable, secure and peaceful. The capacity and potential of every human being is maximized. Every life matters.​

That is the vision of RESTORE HOPE and our flagship program, RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA.

The needs are so great… I can’t begin to tell you about all the ways your gifts save lives. You can learn much more on our website.

I have seen firsthand how our donors’ contributions change lives. The work is challenging, but together we will meet our pledge: Healthcare & promotion to save lives.  Education to provide knowledge.  And opportunity that builds communities and a nation.

Please join our team now and give what you can. We are grateful for your support.

We wish you and your family the Blessings of the season.

​Sincerely,

​Robert M Rufsvold, MD
Co-founder, Senior Advisor, President of the Board, RESTORE HOPE