Samuel N. Duo, Liberia

• Written by Samuel N. Duo, IFP alumnus, Ghana, Cohort 2002
  

Through a rigorous selection process, I won the IFP fellowship in Accra, Ghana in 2002. As a Liberian refugee in Ghana and a graduate of the University of Ghana, I was eligible as a resident of one of the IFP countries (Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal) in West Africa.

Samuel Duo (center, wearing yellow shirt) with a donor representative and farm family in a newly planted soybean field.

After completing my Master's at Pennsylvania State University in 2005, I became a program officer with the Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa (SEND). My job was to help establish the Liberia branch of SEND, a development NGO that works in West Africa to promote livelihood security and equality through participatory development and public policy advocacy. The SEND-Liberia program, designed with the participation of stakeholders, focuses on a civil society capacity building program; income generation for small-scale Liberian farmers and traders through the promotion of soybean production; and a microfinance program, with a family planning education component for rural women.

During this time, I developed and received funding support for two projects: a) A cross-border HIV-AIDS prevention project supported by Action for West African Region/Population Services International (AWARE/PSI); and b) The training of District Development Committees (DDCs) in Nimba County, Liberia, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The HIV/AIDS prevention project was along the migratory route between Liberia and Sierra Leone. This border point, commonly called Bo Waterside, is the official border between Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the Mano River Bridge serving as a crossing point. The SEND Foundation’s main area of intervention targeted the mobile population (truck drivers and prostitutes). SEND used strategies such as the training of trainers, interpersonal communication with peer educators, mass media, distribution of condoms and reinforcing the point of sale at the intervention area to support community-driven development and healthy living in post-war Liberia.

I also taught Extension Education and Rural Sociology at the University of Liberia. In August of 2008, I took a study leave from the University of Liberia to return to Pennsylvania State University to obtain my doctorate in Agricultural and Extension Education, with an emphasis on leadership development. I refer to myself as a “Leadership Development Extension Education Specialist.” My scholarship focuses on the capacity development of grassroots and community-based organizations using non-formal educational approaches. A non-formal education is a way to extend knowledge and skills on topics or issues of interest to community people, in order to educate and empower them. The role of education and training in strengthening capacity development is critical in a fledgling democracy like post-war Liberia.

As Liberian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) transition from a war period (1989-2003) to the post-war development era, understanding the role of education and training in building their capacities is critical. CSOs are the settings that undergird social stability and peace in fledgling democracies such as Liberia. Members and leaders must gain the skills and confidence to hold government, the private sector, and fellow citizens accountable to the common good of their society. Thus it is critical to the stability of democracies to understand how capacity is built in CSOs. The results of my work with SEND Foundation will have implications for the education and training of CSOs and for organizations involved in capacity building in the developing world. They also will contribute to theory concerning civil society and democracy.

As a faculty member, I would like to see the University of Liberia as a civically and socially engaged university. What does an engaged university mean for me, as someone from a war-ravaged and resource-poor developing nation? It means a university making conscious and sustained efforts toward the elimination of hunger; enabling older women and men to read and write (adult literacy); improving public health, especially for the poor in the rural areas; and co-creating an enabling setting that will result in transformative learning for the scholars or educators and the larger community. Transformative learning is where people become educated at key moments in their lives.

Civic engagement in higher education promises benefits that are vitally important to societies around the world, to universities in those societies, and to their students. By capitalizing on the human power and knowledge of their students and professors, engaged universities can directly tackle community problems. Their public service work is not a separate, marginal activity; it is an important part of how professors teach and do research, an essential way that students learn.

When a university is civically engaged, the effects can be immense. Focusing university expertise on improving living conditions in poor areas can make serious headway against social problems. As civic engagement improves the quality of university teaching and learning, it produces thousands of university graduates with both hands-on competence in their fields and a personal commitment to being agents and activists of social change.

With the emergence of a new breed of Liberian academic leaders and scholars who have seen the strengths and weaknesses of developing and developed countries’ institutions and systems, I believe that we will help transform the University of Liberia and improve the quality of life at the grassroots level in Liberia. I am optimistic that a positive change process can be initiated by an individual or group of individuals at institutions of higher learning, and can eventually impact the greater society.