One hundred young Liberians from every county SHIFSD serves gathered in Monrovia for three days of leadership training, project design, and mentorship.
SHIFSD hosted its largest youth leadership summit to date in October, bringing 100 young Liberians — ages 16 to 26 — from every county we work in to Monrovia for a three-day intensive on leadership, project design, and community mobilisation.
The summit's structure was deliberately practical. Rather than lectures, participants worked in county-based cohorts to identify a real problem in their own community and prototype a project response in 72 hours. On the final day, each team pitched to a panel of SHIFSD program directors and partner-organisation representatives.
The projects that made it out the door
- A peer literacy support network across four schools in Bomi.
- A women-in-agriculture radio segment on a community station in Lofa.
- A youth savings group modelled on VSLA, seeded with $200 in matched savings.
- A community mapping project documenting off-grid schools in River Gee.
Three of the four projects have small implementation grants from SHIFSD's youth fund and are now in their first quarter of operation. The fourth — the school mapping project — is being folded into our monitoring and evaluation work directly.
“The best thing about the summit wasn't the training. It was meeting other people my age who are already doing this work in their own towns.”
— Summit participant, Grand Cape Mount
