Women & Family

Located about three miles from the compound of one of Liberia’s trailblazers, Paramount Chief Suacoco, lies a hut inhabited by a couple and their two children in Suacoco Chiefdom, now Suacoco City. The district of Suacoco is named after Liberia’s first female paramount chief, “Madam Suacoco” as she was popularly known.

Women's Aglow International Liberia December 24, 2009 visited Monrovia Central Prison (South Beach) to preach the good news about Jesus and share the Christmas festivity with the female inmates at the prison.
According to Madam Amelia Ward, chairperson of the Women' Aglow Prison Ministry and a former vice standard bearer of the Liberty Party (UP) in 2005, said she was impressed by the decreasing population of female inmates at the Central Prison.
She further disclosed that the Prison Ministry's intent was to introduce vocational skills training to South Beach female inmates who found themselves in prison for minor crimes.
Madam Ward said that the vocational skills would provide the female inmates with requisite skills like tie and dye, soap and body cream making, among others.
Mrs. Musu Harris, Co- Chairperson of Women's Aglow Ministry preached a sermon to the inmates during the visit. She told the inmates that the Lord had not neglected them and that they should therefore remain prayerful.
After the preaching, several food and non-food items including washing and bathing soap, slippers, cans of soft drink and bags of burger wheat were presented to the prisoners. Some items were also given to the prison warders.

The City Mayor of Brewerville, Madam Lucinda Ethelbert, has called on women of Kpallah Town Community to take education seriously, adding that in so doing they will not become liabilities in society.
Madam Ethelbert made the statement during a one-day workshop organized by United Muslim Women Advocacy and Empowerment Organization (UMWAEO) held over the weekend at Kpallah Town.
The City Mayor encouraged the participants at the workshop comprising mainly women and adolescent girls to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to them.
“In the past, our parents only sent the boys to school while we the girls were made to work on the rice, cocoa and rubber farms. They forgot that women form a huge part of the population and their decisions can influence national policies,” Mrs. Ethelbert asserted.
The Mayor further advised the women not to stick to the notion that they only belong to the kitchen and that they are owned by their husbands.
“If you do not educate yourselves, you may become liabilities to your husbands who may consequently treat you as if they own you. By educating yourselves, you will be able to fend for yourselves,” she asserted.

In our edition of today, Women & Family seeks to bring you the calendar of events of an African mother struggling to make ends meet through her day-to-day activities.
As the sun broke its way through the clouds at dawn, pepper birds began to sing their early morning songs. The door of each hut began to open with its inhabitants gearing up for their daily routine. And as the sun rose further across the sky, its rays spread across the horizon, shooting from the back of gigantic trees of the forest and thick bushes surrounding the village of Zao. Mothers were seen rounding up preparations of breakfast as well as their children for school as darkness cleared the way for the morning light to take control. Some of these children walk three to four miles to attend school in a nearby village or town.
Ma Tene, a resident of Zao, had already gone through her morning formalities and was now set for the market. After preparing the kids for school and ensuring that they had something to eat before setting off, Ma Tene prepared her produce [including fresh tomatoes, potato greens, palava sauce, cassava leaf, okra, bitter balls, to mention just a few] harvested from her backyard garden the day before, and kept them in a basket in the fresh night air outside the hut.