More Than Me (MTM) was founded in 2009 with the mission of getting girls off the streets and into school in the West Point, Liberia. In 2013 the More Than Me Academy was established to offer a tuition-free school for girls most at risk of sexual exploitation. Today, More Than Me is one of the leading voices and organizations addressing education and health issues in Liberia and is working with Liberia's Ministry of Education as a School Operating Partner to address the emergency of a failed education system.
More Than Me uses education as a catalyst for transformative social change and is committed to supporting these projects until this generation of students graduate and become Liberia's future leaders.
It all started with a girl. At 11 years old, the girl was selling herself for clean drinking water, when all the girl really wanted was to go to school. More Than Me was founded to meet her needs. They opened a school, the MTM Academy, for 150 girls and saw major progress. Then Ebola hit. The world didn’t act quickly enough, and they knew they had to fight to save her life. After spending six months on the front lines fighting Ebola and seeing three students lose their families (and many other children lose their own lives), they realized that girls would never be safe, never truly thrive, until Liberia does. The first step to rebuilding Liberia is education for all.
Liberia’s education system is a mess. 65% of primary school age children are out of school, and only 20% of students enrolled in Grade 1, enroll in Grade 12.
With just 4 million people and 1.5 million children, Liberia has tremendous potential. The Ministry of Education has asked us to partner with them to replicate the model in Liberian schools and add capacity to the ministry to meet their priorities. They are committed to maintaining a center of excellence at Academy while also scaling successes into pilot government schools across the country.
Mission: More Than Me (MTM) uses education as a catalyst for transformative social change for every girl in Liberia.
