THE HISTORY OF VCIL
Since 2014, VCIL has focused on catering to the urgent needs of children and families dealing with crises such as homelessness, abuse, neglect, lack of education, sheltering children into orphanage homes, providing them with food, clothing, and medicine as well as sending them back to school. According to World Bank classifications, Liberia is a low-income country. Moreover, Liberia ranks 177 out of 188 in the UNDP’s 2015 Human Development Report.
According to the report, 70.1% of Liberia’s 4.4 million people live in multidimensional poverty, 21.5% live near multidimensional poverty, and 35.4% live in severe multidimensional poverty. The contribution of deprivation to overall poverty is 23.0% education, 25.6% health, and 51.4% living standards (UNDP, 2015). Liberia‘s Low-Income status has been exacerbated by the 14 years of civil war. The country is significantly behind most other African countries in nearly all education statistics.
As Liberia education system emerged from a prolonged and brutal destructive period of civil unrest, the long-standing impacts from the war, compounded by the Ebola Viral Disease outbreak, continue to take a toll on the fragile education system. More than 4,400 Liberian schools were closed leaving 1.5 million children without access to formal education until schools were deemed safe to reopen. Many communities were left devastated, leaving children to suffer terribly, many of whom are orphans and homeless.
For more than five years, we have driven positive back to school program, sheltering children into orphanage homes, providing them with food, clothing, and medicine. Through our experience and partnerships, we have impacted the lives of more than 200 children with hope, and a brighter future. Anchored by our mission, we are constantly deepening and bridging new partnerships to innovate and provide scalable, sustainable solutions for the most challenging problems faced in getting children back to school.
​