By Precious D Freeman
The Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection (MOGSP) says it has begun recruiting Liberians to help implement the World Bank US$ 44.60M Liberia Women Empowerment Project (LWEP) across the country.
Minister Williametta Saydee-Tarr said the project is aimed at enhancing women’s empowerment that addresses social norms with a focus on gender based violence prevention and improving access to livelihoods.
She made the statement in Monrovia at the regular press briefing of the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT) the Minister of Gender
According to her, the approximately US$44.60 million Project is financed by the International Development Association (IDA).
According to her, US$17.80 million of the amount is a grant while $26.80 million is a concessional credit.
Minister Saydee-Tarr mentioned that this project focuses on barriers to equality and empowerment: Using a “whole community” approach, and that will implement evidence-based methods to shift social norms through work with communities to address the norms that drive gender-based violence.
She added that LWEP will also pilot investments to increase access to basic gender-based violence, and Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASAP) services at the local level and promote community engagement on girls’ empowerment linked to schools.
“Economic and social empowerment interventions for women to build their economic resources and agency will also be prioritized.”
“LWEP will build the capacity of key institutions, in particular the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (the Implementing Agency) and the Ministry of Agriculture to address gender inequality within their mandates, and create a platform for greater government of Liberia engagement on policies and actions to empower women and girls,” Gender Minister stressed.
She named the Ministries of Education, Agriculture and Health as key government institutions that will partner with the Gender Ministry to implement the LWEP.
Minister Tarr pointed out that the Project has five components:
“Component One is tied to enabling positive social norms and community mobilization: At the community level, the project will fund activities to address the social norms that drive gender inequality, specifically the norms that drive GBV (with a focus on intimate partner violence),” she said.
Minister Saydee-Tarr continued that Component Two will enhance basic services in Health and Education: At the community level, the project will pilot health and education sector activities to address local access to Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health services and GBV services, as well as school-driven community engagement on social norms related to early marriage, pregnancy and girls’ education. Both pilots will be preceded by studies which may result in further recommendations for implementation.
While Component Three will promote resilient livelihoods through community-led approaches: the project will fund women’s livelihoods support and grants using a community-driven, group-based approach. Using the livelihood group setting as a platform, the project will also deliver life skills and gender training/dialogue to build agency, address GBV and strengthen the climate resilience of women’s livelihoods.
The Gender Minister added that component four will strengthen public institutions: At the institutional level, the project will support institutional capacity building for the gender machinery in Liberia, providing support to the Ministry Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Ministry of Agriculture to enable them to better generate sex-disaggregated data and deliver gender-focused programs in line with government of Liberia policies.
And component five: project management, and knowledge management. This component will finance the implementation, management, coordination and oversight of the project.
The component will also fund knowledge management, including an impact evaluation to generate lessons learned about the project’s model and its potential for scaling on a wider basis.
“Given the project’s innovative design, counties will be sequenced to provide lessons learned from early activities before scaling up to additional counties in the second year of implementation,” she added.
She informed journalists that 750 communities from across the country will be selected using targeting criteria that take into account areas of particular need (including comparatively high rates of poverty), the presence of existing community groups (women-only groups or mixed groups with a higher percentage of women) that can be strengthened, (in later stages when the project machinery is established, the focus may shift to creation of new groups where necessary), the presence of basic healthcare and education infrastructure, and feasibility of access to multiple communities by project staff in early stages.
