Government has provided an initial amount of US$526,000 to begin the rehabilitation and de-traumatization of way-warders or at-risk-youths, otherwise known as “zogoes” in the country.
The Deputy Chief Medical Officer at Health Ministry, Gabriel “Gabi” Logan, told the Information Ministry’s media briefing yesterday in Monrovia that government has made available an initial amount of US$526, 000.
He stated, among many things, that there are 47, 900 way-warders or zogoes who are drug addicted, due to either a lack of parental or family care, peer pressure, or self-sabotage.
Of the above-mentioned figure, he continued that 17 percent are females while 83 percent are males. Whether this statistic is only limited to the capital, Monrovia, or beyond it, is yet to be specified.
On Thursday, June 30, 2022, government officially launched what it called “At-Risk-Youth Program” in the country.
In the view of many Liberians, if not all, this is the biggest plan which will target hundreds of At-Risk Youths, to have them rehabilitated and empowered.
President George Weah disclosed then that the At-Risk-Youth Program will cost the government and its partners US$13.9 million to fully implement.
It is not yet known when the program will begin, where it will be held, whether at the National Youth Center in Bensonville or lower Montserrado County, or how the recruitment will be carried out by Health, Youth, and Sports Ministries, amongst others, which are in charge of the program.
Furthermore, how can the government and international partners raise employment and reduce the risk of violence among these poor and risky populations?
Aid programs increasingly focus on helping youths through markets, especially through microenterprise development.
The logic of this assistance, however, rests on the existence of market failures among the poorest of the poor: imperfect credit markets, or production discontinuities such as minimum start-up costs or low returns to small investments.
Cash grants or credit are needed to achieve minimum scale. Street youth with no assets and weak social networks may be particularly vulnerable to this trap.
So far, there has been little research proving the existence of market failures or the ability of aid to help.
Meanwhile, both psychologists and economists have begun to explore the extent to which behavioral skills such as impulse control, time preferences for immediate versus delayed gratification, risk aversion, conscientiousness, setting and keeping long range goals, and being deliberate in choices, contribute to poverty.
In a war zone or post-war Liberia, being highly present and focused might indeed be the optimal survival strategy. During peacetime, however, the absence of such preferences could, in theory, constitute a second source of persistent poverty.
A behavioral poverty trap may lead to low savings rates, wastage of any windfalls, and high-risk behavior, including involvement in drugs, crimes, and violence.
Importantly, core principles underlying economic and psychological theory assume that such preferences are fixed in young adulthood, leading anti-poverty projects to take a paternalistic approach.
Again, little research has critically examined these assumptions. Counter to conventional wisdom, preliminary investigation suggests that a behavioral transformation program, akin to cognitive behavioral therapy, can be successful.
If this is true, it would be ground-breaking, challenging conventional economic and psychological models of behavior, which posit that preferences and behaviors are stable and difficult to change, especially among adults.
