Generation YES

Liberia Renaissance Education Complex

For three years, Generation YES worked with Liberian educators and President Ellen Sirleaf to fund, design, and build the Liberia Renaissance Education Complex, the first new school built in Liberia in decades. Generation YES raised more than $1.1 million and donated in excess of 5,000 hours to ensure Liberian children receive the 21st century education necessary to achieve a peaceful future.

The first phase of construction is complete and the school is now open for Liberian children. Generation YES has now turned over day-to-day tasks to the Swiss-based Liberia Renaissance Foundation. Further developments can be found at Our-School-Liberia.com.

Collaboration between a GenYES school in the US and Liberia

Generation YES Executive Director Dr. Dennis Harper taught in Liberia during the 1970s.

Over thirty years ago, my wife and I accepted teaching positions in the West African country of Liberia. We arrived with our six-week-old son and spent two wonderful years working with the remarkable students of this country. Our time there ended when a bloody civil war broke out and we were forced to flee the country.

Unfortunately for the past 25 years, Liberia has exploded with violence and death - with many of my former students among the 275,000 children who perished. The nation was destroyed, and a generation has been lost to unimaginable tragedy and displacement. Finally, in 2003 U.N. and U.S. peacekeepers and Liberian peace activists, many of them women, began to stabilize the country.

My involvement in the Liberian Renaissance Educational Complex came by way of some of my former students who planned to establish a world-class school in Liberia -- perhaps the poorest country in the world. It was further energized when in 2005, a friend and remarkable woman, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President, the first woman president in Liberia and first woman head of state in all of Africa.

This "high tech - high touch" model school for Africa is a much-needed symbol of hope in rebuilding Liberia. The students in this school will learn that they can make a difference in their community, their nation, and the world.

In 2007, President Ellen Sirleaf presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the Liberia Renaissance Education Complex. President Sirleaf gave an eloquent speech about the importance of the education complex to the future of Liberia (click the picture to see the speech). The President stated, "One can think beyond the ordinary, think beyond the conventional, that one can start a process that produces changes in attitudes, in arrangements, in methods, in applications and that's what LREC is all about." She went on to say "We look forward to seeing right here on this spot, children in Liberia coming from this new vision with a new way of doing things, with new talents, new skills, new approaches, new contributions."

Fact Sheet

Download this Fact Sheet on the LREC project (PDF)