By Bill Weh Pyne
The Gentlemen’s Club of Pennsylvania (PA), a US-based Liberian non for profit and non-governmental humanitarian organization has donated desks and arm chairs to several public schools in Liberia.
The Club’s mission is to identify needs in communities ranging from health, social to education among others and take steps to resolve or solve those needs which are evident of their donation to the public schools.
Besides the desks and chairs, the club earlier donated medical books to the A.M. Doglotti School of Medicine worth over US$20,000 in 2018 and has made several supplies of assorted materials to Liberians in the US during the heat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Basically what you see here today is the combination of our gesture; that is, the Gentlemen’s Club of PA has decided to assist public schools in need of desks and chairs and so we have come to make a donation of 400 desks and 100 arm chairs,”Josiah Yaidoo, Chairman of the Club stated.
Mr. Yaidoo, an educator and a former teacher in a refugee camp in Ghana, made the statement recently in Kakata, Margibi County while presenting the donation to the Wenneh Ta Public School, one of the beneficiaries.
Other schools expected to benefit from the approximately US$25,000 worth of donation include Jovan 15 Gate, Richard Ta Margibi, Frank Tolbert Bensonville and Dekegai Morris Farm, Montserrado County among others.
Continuing his remarks Chairman Yaidoo disclosed that his organization is anticipating doing more in the future as the needs arise including giving scholarships; but noted that the issue of scholarship is complicated and needs proper planning.
“We want to set example in everything we do. We are working things out so that if we launch our scholarship program it will be very tight so that the beneficiaries will be the real target people instead of the usual ‘who know system’,” he added.
According to the Club’s chairman, they are professional people and will not venture in the very wrong things that others are doing that are retarding the progress of the country.
Receiving the donation, Stephen H. Toe, County Education Officer of Margibi expressed heartfelt gratitude to the Club for such a timely gesture which is meant to ease some the seating-capacity problems that many of the schools are faced with.
He then called on other well-meaning Liberians or philanthropists to emulate the indelible gesture of the Club because the Ministry of Education is challenged in many areas and needs help.
The Wenneh Ta School Administration also applauded the kindheartedness of the Club and promised to earnestly use the donation for its intended purpose.
One could just imagine the consternation coupled with ecstasy in the faces of students who benefitted from the donation.
Prior to the turnover ceremony, our reporter was taken by some students on a conducted tour of some classrooms that hardly had about ten chairs. The students intimated that most of them carry chairs from their homes to school to afford them the opportunity to sit comfortably in class instead of sitting on the bare floor during class time.