Artgeo Foundation, Inc.

There is a high ratio of male-female employment in both public and private sectors in Liberia. Women employment in Liberia is estimated at 5% in private sector 25% in public sector 5% in informal sector totaling 35%. The underlying factor is lack of education. We are working on providing training and education to women and girls of Liberia as a means of creating male-female competition on the job market by training 100,000 women & girls for possible job creation by 2030. Many of them are denied employment on the basis of lack of formal qualification as such our solution would yield its positive outcome if the initiative is fully sustained. Many of our beneficiaries will gain self-employment, and the public and private sectors will absolve them resulting to competition; our initiative is free of charge.

We are working on women empowerment for possible employment and competition between them and their male-counter parts. Women employment is estimated at 35% in public, private and informal sectors in Liberia. Our basic focus is increasing women’s employment by 30 and 40 percent in the public and private sectors respectively by 2030. There are estimated over 950,000 women and girls unemployed in Liberia; the basic factors are lack of education and training, cultural and religious barriers. Example the percentage of female teachers in upper secondary education is 4.38 % and male 93.22%;  percentage of female teachers in lower secondary education is 4.96 % while male stands at 93.4%.

Liberia suffered 14-year civil conflicts mostly women and girls suffered humiliation in different forms including rape, forced marriage among others leaving many with children without known fathers. They search for funding to support their kids with no support for their own education leaving many without education and training.

According to Jannel Fetterolf’s Pew Research Center, March 7, 2017, “Women account for 40% of the total labor force in many countries” while the World Bank (2019) estimates the global statistics for women employment stands at 39.0 percent citing cultural and other factors.

Our solution is simply training and education. We are constructing 23-classroom buildings in 4 of the 15 counties to provide technical and vocation education specifically for women and girls in different career disciplines such as Office Practical Management & Procedures, Agriculture, Entrepreneurship Development, Customer Relationship Management, Small Business Development, Computer Science, and other IT related courses, Building Construction, Carpentry, Masonry, Driving, Electricity, Mechanical Engineering, Secretarial Science,  etc.

Our Office Practical Management and Secretarial Science training will enable beneficiaries to have first-hand knowledge on office management, while our Entrepreneurship, Customer Relationship Management and Small Business Development programs will empower beneficiaries for self-employment. In addition, courses like electricity, Driver education, Carpentry, Masonry and Mechanical engineering will create self-employment opportunity respectively.

The only technology we will use is Information Technology such Computer Programming using PhP, Python, etc.

Our solution serves women and girls who are disadvantaged as a result of lack of employment and/or empowerment and will impact their lives simply by job creation, self-empowerment, competition between them and their male-counter parts in both the public and private sectors including the informal sector.

To understand their needs, I have conducted feasibility studies among the targeted beneficiaries and have had series of meetings to know their needs. About 70% of those interviewed cited lack of training as a result of poverty, 10% cited cultural barrier, 15% cited gender biases, and 5% cited early marriage.

Our solution will provide hands-on practical knowledge in office management, create job opportunities and strengthen women’s capacity for self-employment.

Our solution targets marginalized and unemployed women and girls across Liberia. Our solution will provide efficiency, competencies, and effectiveness in job creation. In addition to our training initiative, we work to eliminate the practice of early marriage by working with traditional leaders including local authorities and central government’s arm, the Ministry of Gender for the eradication of child marriage which is one of the major causes to lack of education in Liberia resulting to educational inequality between boys and girls.

We have had competitors in the past and still have, but what makes us different is our objective - competition between women and their male counter-parts. Competitors such government, members of Parliament and other politicians are considered indirect competitors. For politicians, they start such initiative during elections period when they are seeking for a particular elected position, when they loose the elections, such training programs are discontinued leaving their beneficiaries without hope.

For local government, their initiative is marked by politics, nepotism, favoritism and corruption and their projects are often centralized leaving many impoverished women and girls out of the process and are often cost intensive.

What makes ours innovative is its targeted audience, cost free, and motive for job creation and competition between they and their male-counterparts. Since the history of the countries, there has been no such regional training opportunity with a motive as this. Many institutions and organizations attempt to provide training opportunities for women and girls but are not as specific as we are giving the fact that 100,000 of them are targeted at a giving period of time for job creation and economic empowerment.

The technology used in our initiative is STEM. For women-led farming organizations, we are introducing Soil and Water Sensors.

Perhaps the equipment having the most immediate effect are soil and water sensors. These sensors are durable, unobtrusive and relatively inexpensive, and they provide numerous benefits. For instance, these sensors can detect moisture and nitrogen levels, and the farm can use this information to determine when to water and fertilize rather than rely on a predetermined schedule. That results in more efficient use of resources and therefore lowered costs, but it also helps the farm to be more environmentally friendly by conserving water, limiting erosion and reducing fertilizer levels in local rivers and lakes.

This technology is widely used in the US and the Netherlands. 

Our solution will greatly impact the solution to a larger extent in that impoverished women and girls will be trained and economically empowered; this will increase the nation's economic, improve the livelihood of upcoming younger generations.

Example if 500 women are trained and supported, they are employed in both the public and private sectors while others provide self employment opportunity or themselves.

Immediate output is economic viability and longer term results are competition between them are their male counter-parts, gender inequality, etc.

Our solution is currently serving 2000 women and in one year we will be serving 5,500 women and girls; five years we will be serving 15,000 beneficiaries.

Our goal is to have well up-to-date training facilities to accommodate the influx of women and girls to increase our current intake from 150 by batch to at least 400 by batch and in the next five years we hope to see all of our graduates either employed, or financially empowered in both the private and public sectors.

The key barrier is financial as our initiative is extremely capital intensive. Another barrier is cultural and religious as many people traditionally believe that women education is a waste.

To overcome financial barrier, we intend to allow others (males) to attend our training with fees charged, we then use the fees paid by their male counter-parts to sustain our initiative. It is going to be completely free for females. In addition, we will continue to write proposals to our local and internal partners seeking support. Culturally, we are engaging our traditional counter-parts on a daily basis to ensure complete alliance and partnership to allow our females to obtain the level of education we intend to provide.

We are non-profit organization.

We currently have 3 persons on our team.

Because of our commitment, dedication, passion and innovation, we are best suited to start and implement this initiative. As Executive Director, I obtained a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor's degree in Information Technology. I studied in Liberia, China and India. I have 17 years of experience working with the Liberian government in the IT industry.

Our Program Manager has a BSc degree in Public Administration & Management. He currently holds a post-graduate diploma in Human Resource Planning & Development. He studied in both Liberia and India. He has 16 years of experience working with the government of Liberia including the private sector in diverse areas including HR Manager, HR Consultant among others.

Our Director for Technical Services obtains a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering and has 7 years of experience in training and and Engineering.

We are currently partnering with the African Youth Commission; our work is capacity building. Tony Elimelu Foundation and our work with them is financial support.

The value propositions that Artgeo Foundation will provide to its customers (women and girls) as its target audience are indicated as follows, that the actual goal is to attract first-time enrolled students and campus visitors alike and provide them with adequate value to transform them from simply campus visitors and part-time students to full time students. Artgeo seeks to provide the most affordable and high quality training opportunity during Liberia’s post-conflict recovery initiatives.

The Service

Artgeo Foundation will be one of the best trainers in the educational industry in Liberia that provides easy access to training facilities, accessible platforms for those physically challenged and the less fortunate in general. We will have extra tutorials for those difficult to catch up especially the visually impair. Our lesson presentation will show key difference between regular training methods and our course presentation mechanisms. They will be presented in one of the easy-to-understand formats by our trained and experienced teachers that will attract many students from social, economic, religious, geographical, gender, traditional and cultural diversities. 

Our financial plans are based on the ‘seed funding’ provided during the last quarter of 2019; a sum of $5,000 won from the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum 2019 based in the Nigerian capital Abuja. This amount is nearly $1,000,000 Liberian dollars and start-kicked our first mass enrollment and purchase chairs and carries out extensive classroom maintenance to pave the way for continuous mass enrollment in subsequent quarters. To cover additional counties, Artgeo would require additional $10,000,000 Liberian Dollars to be spent on new facilities rental, transportation, staff salaries, training materials, etc. This amount might be raised through venture capitalist or grant.

This above-mentioned investment has be used to finance administrative and other costs for 24 months before self-financing is initiated. In addition, fees paid by other students will be used to manage the institution in the absence of donor support. But we basically depend on donor support because our entity is non-profit.

I am applying to Solve to get funding for training and education of women and girls to reduce gender inequality in terms of education, economic empowerment in both public and private sectors and to further create competition between them and their male counter-parts on the job market.  

I need partners support in Funding and revenue model; this means budget preparation and expenditure report generation including customers needs assessment.

Board members or advisors - I need further support in the process and procedures to get the appropriate board member that function in line with the organization's objectives. Avoiding wrong board members selection will help minimize obstacles in the organization's function.

Monitoring and evaluation - project evaluation is extremely key in its implementation phrase. This helps to know if the organization's goals are being realized. Total support partnership is needed.

I do not have any specific name in mind but i would like to partner with MIT faculty and Solve members. Basically, I would like to partner with for training and financial support. Training in different areas of project implementation.

We have developed a platform specifically for women training. They will access our many courses offline due to the cost of data in which they cannot afford. These training are meant to empower and equip them for job creation.

We are currently constructing a 23-classroom structure for training of women and girls in STEM for better living and creation. We intent to benefit 100,000 women and girls by 2030 in Liberia and Sierra Leon through job creation as a result of our initiative. Currently, we have graduated more than 200 women and girls in different computer training programs in which nearly all have been either self-employed or employed by companies and NGO's. We hope to continue our initiative until we absolve 100,000 beneficiaries.  

Education and training are our major goals. Our actual goal is to provide education to impoverished women and girls affected by many factors. Global education and training worldwide is our top priority. By 2030, we hope to benefit 100,000 women and girls in science, STEM for possible job creation. Our initiative is not only limited but goes across to adult literacy - most adults' education are disrupted by many factors in many countries. Our initiative provides solution to their training and education needs.