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Liberia Research Fund

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Dear friends, family, and supporters,
Help us fund our Liberian research team this summer! 7 years ago, a young woman told me tragically how she had dropped out of secondary school after being raped by a man working at her school. She loved education and wanted to be a teacher, but the incident left her pregnant and emotionally broken. She was forced to leave school and her family disowned her. She later fell into prostitution. Her story may sadly not be too unique. But it is one that I have learnt in my 15 years of education nonprofit work is often not told as the possible reprocussion of educating girls in unsafe schools.  We just don't know enough about how sending girls to school unprotected may or may not expose them to different prevalance rates of child sexual abuse outside of legal early marriage. 

I am a PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. I have worked in L.Am. and Africa on education programs for impoverished children. I lived in Liberia for many years. This topic so overwhelms my heart that I have decided to dedicate my dissertation focus on it. I will be working with an extraordinary team in Liberia of national female social workers to study how educating girls relates to child protection from sexual assault. We will do household surveys with young women (18 yrs up) and their parents to learn from their experiences.  It prioritizes local knowledge and expertise to inform the findings, which will not only be published but also shared with the participants' communities and the Government of Liberia. This study builds robustly on previous studies to understand the mechanisms that influence protecting girls and ensuring their education and agency to be actors in their adulthood.

Yet this research requires intense field research which will last over 3 months. This Go Fund Me is to help raise funds for the Liberian evaluation team's expenses. 100% of funds donated by you all will go directly to the volunteer social workers for travel costs whose compassion and dedication to this research is incredible. Many of them were volunteers with Playing to Live/RESH during our Ebola program, and are currently unemployed, single mothers, pursuing advanced university studies. This research wants to ensure our Liberian team and our participants are well-funded and our first priority! 

Many of you who have supported my PhD and nonprofit work in recent years know how hard it is to find funding for this type of field research. Any support that you are able to give (even if just a few dollars) will mean so much to our team! I will be so grateful for your support and belief in our goal to help promote safe schooling for girls.  Thank you for your amazing support!
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  • Anonymous
    • $50 
    • 6 yrs
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Organizer

Jessi Hanson
Organizer
Pittsburgh, PA

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