Episcopal Press and News
LIBERIA: Budget shortfall could cause girls' school to close
Episcopal News Service. April 13, 2010 [041310-06]
Lynette Wilson
A $17,000 budget gap may force the all-girls Bromley Episcopal Mission School to close its doors for the rest of the 2009-10 school year, displacing up to 125 students, many of them orphans.
The school was unable to raise the full amount it budgeted for the academic year, said Esther Page, chairwoman of the school's board of directors, in a telephone interview from Brockton, Massachusetts, where she is visiting friends and family and undergoing medical treatment.
"The board isn't in a position to raise a huge amount of money … in Liberia, there is donor fatigue. It is the same group of people we depend on. Everyone is targeting the same group; we can raise some but not all," said Page, who plans to return to Liberia later this month.
The school budgeted $109,000 for 2009-10 academic year, raising $58,000 through tuition, and counting on fundraising and donations to make up the difference. It costs $1,000 annually for a student to attend. Many students receive scholarships paid for by Episcopalians, and some parents pay their daughters’ tuition.
Tuition accounts for less than 35 percent of the budget, with tuition-paying parents subsidizing the rest of the girls' education, Page said.
Bromley is one of 31 schools belonging to the Episcopal Church of Liberia. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori visited Bromley in January during a weeklong visit to the West African country.
"The Episcopal Church of Liberia sees the operation of our schools as a key focus in our diocesan efforts to rebuild our church and Liberia as a nation," said Liberia Bishop Jonathan B.B. Hart in an e-mail message. "The Bromley Episcopal Mission School for Girls and all of the Episcopal schools are key to our evangelistic mission. We continue to have needs for assistance while we make increasing efforts towards sustainability. We invite all who can help to join our efforts."
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Liberia, a nation of 3.5 million people, was crushed by civil war, with more than 250,000 people killed and more than 1 million displaced. The war took an especially harsh toll on Liberia's women and children, many of whom witnessed or were victims of horrendous violence, as documented in the final report of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Like most of Liberia's schools, Bromley closed its doors in 1997 during the heightened violence of the nation's decade-and-a-half-long civil war. At war's end in 2003 the school reopened, accepting about 75 orphans rescued from refugee camps. Today the school's enrollment stands at 175 students, of whom 125 board at the K-12 school, and the remaining 50 attend classes daily.
"We are giving the girls a chance of being hopeful that people care for them, especially the boarders … these are girls we took from various places," Page said.
About 45 of the boarders are "orphans," meaning either their parents are dead or they don't have parents who can afford to care for them. The orphans typically stay with sponsor families in the diocese during school breaks, she added.
Bromley School was founded more than 100 years ago by the Rt. Rev. S.D. Ferguson, the first African-American Episcopal bishop in the United States. The school is located on the St. Paul River in Clay Ashland, Montserrado County, about a 60-minute drive from the nation's capital, Monrovia.
"This is an Episcopal School that we established and they are in trouble," said Kimberly Haeringer, a missioner from the Diocese of Virginia, who became involved with the school after a mission visit in November 2007. "I feel like we have a responsibility to help these girls who have no hope without our help."
From her home in Virginia, Haeringer is reaching out to the broader Episcopal Church, and Bromley's alumni, friends and supporters in the U.S. In the past she has given presentations and made speeches on behalf of the school in the Diocese of Virginia. She is also appealing to followers of her online journal, she said.
Founded by the U.S.-based Episcopal Church in 1836, the Episcopal Church of Liberia was a diocese in the Episcopal Church until 1980, when it became part of the Anglican Province of West Africa. As part of that change of affiliation, the Episcopal Church and the Liberia diocese established a covenant partnership, which pledges each entity to mutual ministry and interdependence and calls for financial subsidies with an eventual goal of self-sufficiency and sustainability for the Liberian Church. The most recent version of the covenant was adopted by the Episcopal Church's Executive Council in April 2009.