GANTA, Liberia (AlertNet) - It is recess at the John Wesley Pearson School in Ganta, a small town on Liberia's border with Guinea, and 22-year-old Prince Bensar rides his motorbike in the courtyard after checking his latest exam results.
Bensar is a student in the twelfth grade - the final year of secondary education - at the school. He also works as a motorbike taxi rider on the streets of Ganta. He makes about 12 dollars a day, which he uses to fund his education in the absence of any other financial support.
At his age, Bensar, who has eight siblings, should be finishing university but the delay in his schooling has not dented his ambitions.
"I want to be a medical doctor," he said. "From here I am going to go to college (university) and through college I will succeed."
Bensar is one of a growing number of young Liberians whose education was disrupted by Liberia's 14-year civil war but who have opted to go back to school and finance their schooling through work.
The conflict, which ended in 2003 after claiming as many as 270,000 lives, severely disrupted the countryÂ?s education system, forcing thousands of children to miss out on starting school at the right age. Others who began school dropped out, according to the United Nation's Children's agency (UNICEF).
In a country where 68 percent of the rural population and 55 percent of the urban population lives on less than one dollar a day, many families cannot support their children's school fees at secondary level.
Bensar encouraged other potential students to go back to school, even if they had to work at the same time.
"They (other young people) should try to put in efforts even if there is no financial support," Bensar said.
The school's authorities welcome pupils of all ages.
"They know that education is durable and it is a key to success," says James Kardamie, the principal of the school.
"We are proud of them because some of these twelfth graders are real grown-ups who are married with children and you must be determined and courageous to come back to school," he added, sitting in his office beneath posters of U.S. President Barack Obama and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
EDUCATION OPENS DOORS
Bensar's classmate, Shirley Gontee, 23, owns a petrol filling station where she makes about 64 dollars a day selling fuel to Bensar and many other riders in Ganta, about 260km east of Monrovia.
At the start of the civil war, Gontee and her family fled Ganta to a nearby town where they survived by eating off people's farms. By the time they returned, their home and possessions had been destroyed and everyone had to ensure the family's survival, which made it impossible to go to school.
"I started by selling small items, then I moved on to sell gasoline in bottles and now I run a filling station," said Gontee, who plans to take a university degree in business administration.
"I decided to go to school to learn and sustain my family and myself in the future," added Gontee, whose five-year-old boy is already attending kindergarten.
Deborah, 35, shares the same drive. She is married with four children. She is now in the eleventh grade but also sells shoes after school.
"I came back to school because if you are educated you will be working, and if you're not you'll just remain on the farm," she said.
Such motivation is welcomed by local authorities in a country where half a million children do not attend school and hundreds of children, especially girls, drop out of school each year to seek jobs or marriage to support their families.
The Liberia Ministry of Education and the World Food Programme (WFP) are implementing a school feeding programme in 2000 schools across the country to boost attendance.
In districts where the gender gap at schools favours boys by 15 percent or more, the WFP provides monthly take-home rations including tins of oil and cereals.
"The rations help to compensate for any perceived loss of income during the time young girls spend at school and they serve as an incentive for parents to send their very young children to school," Aaron Sleh, a WFP communications officer in Liberia, told AlertNet.
(Editing by Katherine Baldwin)
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