Give Liberian Children Healthcare, Education, HOPE

Dear Friends of Restore Hope,

“I was very downhearted because all of my sisters died of Ebola, and all of their children are with me,” A recent client named Korpo told our team when she began group therapy earlier this year. “I’ve learned to be stronger and am working towards finding support.” Korpo is one of 575 women who enrolled this reporting period in the twelfth cycle of our group therapy program — one of the largest cohorts in the seven-year history of this work, and proof that the model your donations built continues to reach further into Liberia’s underserved communities.

The results from this cycle demonstrate the efficacy of the program. Among the 177 women for whom we have complete before-and-after clinical data, everyone moved below the clinical threshold for depression. These results were achieved by lay facilitators — Liberians trained and supervised by Restore Hope.

The change your support makes possible reaches beyond any single woman's symptoms and into her household. Before treatment, 60.2 percent of participants said their emotional struggles made daily life very or extremely difficult; by the end of the cycle, none did. The share who said they could reliably ask someone for help nearly quadrupled, from 20.3 to 69.5 percent. Their children felt it too: the proportion of caregivers who reported never using physical punishment more than tripled, from 12.5 to 39.0 percent, and the share of children who never missed school in the past month nearly quadrupled, from 7.7 to 30.2 percent. A mother's recovery, we see again and again, becomes her family's stability.

None of this happens without you. GlobalGiving donors provide the flexible funding that ensures the program continues and reaches those with who need it most. Over the next quarter, we will begin our thirteenth group therapy cycle, continue expanding the adolescent program, and keep building the case — with your help — that community-based, community-led mental health care can reach the hardest-to-serve places in the world.

Thank you for believing in the women and youth of Liberia, and in the model that is helping them believe in themselves again.

With gratitude,

The Restore Hope: Liberia Team