Jewel’s Starfish Foundation @ 25 This December -Former VP on how it all began – Challenges, Success Stories

MONROVIA – It has been a long journey for Madam Jewel Cianeh-Suacoco-Howard Taylor. Rising up in youthful years to be an ace banker, Liberia’s first lady, and then in adulthood a Senator and Vice President of the Republic awash with seas of national and international accolades, has been quite an accomplished, memorable feat for daughter of a typical middle-income parents. Taking a lull from hotly charged public service, she is back full time – at least for a time – with what she likes most: charity and fond time with impoverished people and communities through her flagship Starfish Foundation which she had somewhat played down while giving attention to national duties. Now, she back on board full time, and she’s been speaking about the Foundation’s achievements and challenges.

Now a “free agent” – back to non-governmental works which are her passion from youth – Bong County’s former Senator and Liberia’s former Vice President – will be celebrating the 25^th founding anniversary of her brainchild, the Jewel Starfish Foundation, and in an exclusive interview with The Analyst, she underscored the achievements and challenges of the organization.

Regarding the enormous achievements of the foundation since its founding, the former Vice President said: “I am happy to say that, if you look at the level of work that we have done over a 25-year period, we sent thousands of little girls to school across the country. 2023, the number of girls that we sent to school was 4,000 little girls across Liberia. Of course, Bong County has the highest number. I did work in other counties, but I wanted to ensure that the work that I have done would also impact people who come from my county.

“There is a small project that we are doing with the University of Liberia, providing stipends to girls who can’t afford to pay for their thesis. You have six months to do the thesis, you have to buy materials, pay for internet and sometimes girls drop out of school just because of that.”

She also enumerated several of success stories, challenges and the context of the foundation’s founding. See The Analyst’s exclusive interview with Madam Howard Taylor below:

Question: Senator & VP Taylor. Good afternoon. Where have you been since the transition? How are you faring?

Answer: I am happy to be here. It has been a while since I was on the media. Let me welcome the Analyst team again to the headquarters of the Jewel Starfish Foundation.

It has been quite an exhaustive time for you in public service. Looking back, how did you make it?

The truth is that I work for 30 straight years, from 1997 when I became first lady to 2023. I always work. This is the first time I have been out of office. I don’t have an active job, out of work. My friends tell me it is time to rest. To reset, renew and just take care of myself. That’s what I have been doing. But the truth is, for someone who loves working, whether is going in the field to talk to young women, or standing on the stage discussing important issues in an attempt to change the mind-set of people, it is a little bit boring for me.

How does it feel leaving Government? Where are you headed now?

 The thing about it is that when you leave government, there are other opportunities, and I am happy that I have the opportunity as the founder of the Jewel Starfish Foundation. This is our 25^th year in operations. To continue to be a service, it wouldn’t be at the high level I was before, but engaging the young people on our program, girls across the country, making sure that we continue to make impact. And this is being our 25^th years; we want to reaffirm what we have been doing, look at those projects and how I can continue to make impact in the lives of people.

So, it is like, for now, keeping yourself busy after a long public service journey. Right?

I say when you are a national leader, you never really retired. You may move from stage to another, but I believed each of us still has something positive to give to our nation in terms of service. So I am trying in my weak way to continue to do that. We started in 2001 when I was First Lady. When you look back during the war, the [Charles Taylor] government was strangulated.  People were in displace camps everywhere. In fact, nobody was going to school because the school buildings, the churches all became places of refuge. And so as First Lady, I was involved in the humanitarian task force to provide food items and medical supplies, health care to the people in the displace centers across Montserrado, and some in Margibi and Bong Counties. I didn’t go beyond Bong because by that time the rest of the country was really a no man area.

The year 2000 was indeed a difficult period of that government; Isn’t It? How did you cope?

In 2000, we saw how women suffered, and we knew if there was peace, there would be prosperity and women will get more; they will enjoy during these times because whenever there is crisis or any negative thing happen, the women and children suffered. And so, visiting all of the displaced camps – from Jah Tono Town to Gray Stone where the Embassy currently is to all of the different schools – I saw the situation of women and girls and it did something to me as a woman.

I have to sit and think, what do we do. Because my background, and my parents being health care professionals, and also humanitarian, you will be surprise how many people came to our clinic for OBGYN [obstetrician-gynecology] treatment whether to deliver a baby or child in crisis and they didn’t have the money to pay my parents. So my parents would say ‘okay go,’ that’s all they were doing. So, I asked my mother one day, how do we go to school and you have everybody in private schools and keep telling everybody go and if don’t come back. How do you make money? And she said God will pay us.

This must have had an impact on you, a sort of inspiration for what you began to do and up till now.

I saw it as a way of life, but I knew that if something wasn’t done intentionally to ensure that young women and girls stay secure, stay stable then we would loss generations. Because if one woman is empowered, what happen is that, that one woman changes the destiny of the generations behind them. Because, if you finish school, she has a job or you have your own business, your children have better access to schools, hospitals, waters, medical care; because you can afford it. Whereas, if you have a woman that is incapacitated that has no way out, the next generation is destroy because they wouldn’t be able to make earns meal.

How did you begin formally tackling such problems?

I decided first to create the Mayo Starfish Foundation, this is where we started. Mayo is my great, great grandmother. She was the last queen in the Salayea Kingdom. She didn’t have any children so the sister was brought in to have the children. The sister of the queen became my great, great grandmother. So I said to remember her, I will name the Foundation, the Mayo Starfish Foundation.

How did it become Starfish then?

Starfish was added to the story because, I said the fishes are very fragile. If the wave brings them and put them on the sea show when the water doesn’t come back in about two to three hours they just dry up and died and that’s what happen to little girls who have no opportunity, they dry up and died. So I decided to name it initially the Mayo Starfish Foundation, but everywhere I went people will ask me, who is this Mayo?  Why is it the Starfish name after her? And then an old lady said to me this is your legacy project; if you put another person name on it tomorrow, people will never even remember that there was a Jewel Starfish, and they will say Mayo Starfish and wouldn’t remember the story. And it would no longer be connected to you. So because of that, when I became Senator, we change the name from Mayo Starfish Foundation to Jewel Starfish Foundation which bears the name after me. 

Let’s talk a little bit about the Foundation’s 25 years of existence and achievements.

Right, I am happy to say that, if you look at the level of work that we have done over a 25-year period, we sent thousands of little girls to school across the country. 2023, the number of girls that we sent to school was 4,000 little girls across Liberia. Of course, Bong County has the highest number. I did work in other counties, but I wanted to ensure that the work that I have done would also impact people who come from my county. There is a small project that we are doing with the University of Liberia, providing stipends to girls who can’t afford to pay for their thesis. You have six months to do the thesis, you have to buy materials, pay for internet and sometimes girls drop out of school just because of that.

Is Starfish Foundation limited to Liberia or also across our borders?

We have gone beyond Liberia. We have 21 girls in Sierra Leone. We have 21 girls in Ghana, and 21 girls in Malawi. They are 63 girls, they are all Sierra Leoneans, Ghanaians and Malawians. And for me, my idea was reaching beyond our own boundaries, and if we could raise the money to help, we go ahead and do it. There is a little girl who graduated in Malawi a year ago, her name is Lazorent. She is doing biochemistry at the University she is her in second year.

And the impact?

So the impact we made is first, providing opportunities. In Liberia, we have 21 girls that we took from West Point and send them to Risk Institute. When you see those girls today, you will never believe it, they are the most intelligent; they are at the University of Liberia now. So, I think the impact has been to provide opportunities, other impact has been mentoring.

Twice a year we go and mentor them on Sexual and Gender-based violence, on their rights and responsibilities. We are now trying to find internships for some of them, the Colony Hotel took one, the other day we were trying to find internships for some of them who are doing mining engineering, Aquaculture and Fisheries.

If we count over the years, we have actually help more than ten thousand people who have gone through the program. We started over 20 years ago, and every year we pay for girls from 7^th grade to the university. We have about 91 girls at the university now, they leave from different places and come and take the test here in Monrovia and when they pass we add them on to our list. It has been challenging financially, but the impact can never be overlooked.

Looking forward, what are the prospects—and challenges?

I am praying that by the time we get to December where we will be celebrating our 25^th anniversary, we will have some of them coming to talk about how far they are. We have medical doctors, we have administrators, we have chief accountants; we have people who have gone into different fields. What I wish I could do is to continue to raise funds that I had over the last 20 years to do more. The fact is that, there are many, many more young children that need this help. We are the only NGO, I believe that, except for the Leymah Gbowe Foundation that is actually paying school fees. We are impacting them at the level where they are. And, we have a challenging year, I must admit. Lots of resources coming from my income, although we still have one or two sponsors that are helping us, but I think we are still going to push forward.

We are asking girls who finish high school to go to UL instead of the other universities because the other universities are very expensive. UL is like a hundred dollars per person per semester, so, and it is the nation’s premier institution thankfully. So it is not that we are moving them from the higher level University to a lower level. The University of Liberia is our first and number one University. Thankfully, it is government sponsored so the fees are low. We will use the University of Liberia as our premium university because it will allow us to continue to do our work at a lower level and then we wait until the girls who are in other universities finish.

And so, this September, we wouldn’t be sending girls to other universities, except the UL because I must admit that the challenges are financial and things are not the same but I still want to continue to impact the lives of young people. Those that are already in private universities will continue and finish, we are not adding. All the new students who are graduating from high school now, we will ask them to take the test of the University of Liberia and when they pass, they will stay with the University of Liberia because it is something that we can afford. We do owe some fees at some of the universities and we are trying to pay that off so that we can finish all those girls that are there. But, our primary focus starting from September 2025 will be at the University of Liberia.

Right, I realized and I think it is true that when we talk about digital education, most of the public schools don’t have computers, they are learning little a bit from their telephones. But, we need digital learning. During our tenure, President Weah started the digital learning process, this government under President Boakai has continued.

I think there is a training program for young people in digital skills. We have our stem class room, very beautiful, we have electronics and different things that we will be teaching. The first cohort of Jewel Starfish trainers will be starting in April.

Any word of advice to your beneficiaries and perhaps potential beneficiaries?

People are now coming in, putting in their applications. We want to encourage our daughters, not just those who are with Jewel Starfish Foundation, but those that are in the different communities to take a walk and come and do one or two classes. So we will be focusing on digital education, on mentoring, SGBV, leadership and then continue with our scholarship programs at a lower rate because we cannot afford to send ten thousand people to school in 2025, but we will do some shifting so that we can be able to maintain the people that we have.

The new program will require an average of 3.00. So, when we started many years ago a lot of girls haven’t even gone to school so it was slow, so I said where ever we find girls that are in need we just added on. That’s how the number kept adding.

Where ever I visited across the country, and I found girls in desperate situations, we will add them on to go to school in their own areas. So, the criteria were a little bit open for people to realize that we weren’t playing, but that the girls are educated they can be wherever they want to be.

And I say many of the girls are that level 3.5, those who are in universities 3. 0, if you go below 3.0 we will drop you, this is a scholarship program that takes the sacrifices of people.

And so, the criteria are now 3.0.

But, we will be having a special program for Jewel Scholars and that will be girls who have 3.5 GPA and above. So, the 3.0 and others wouldn’t be dropped because they are our base line but we will be looking at the best and brightest. Those we will highlight; we will make sure they find a way to get opportunity outside of the country. We are going to concentrate on providing college and vocational and skills training, because this is where the needs are.

Everybody shouldn’t go to school and do accounting. The girls from West Point, I am happy when I had a meeting with them and told them nobody going to do accounting, so go into technical areas. Thankfully the University have a college of Aquaculture and Fisheries, so we encourage them to go in there. We encourage some people to do mining engineering, and Geology so that there are high earn-paying jobs for them when they finish.

Many of have agreed to do the sciences. The girls from West Point are exceptional because all of them are in the science area, in the next two years we will be having some serious graduates and to see how we can place them in the areas that our country is abundance in resources and we are not just women in those areas, but we are Liberians who have gone to school and learned to be in those different places that the law requires.

We are providing internship for them, for example, the girl who is doing geology, and another one doing mining engineering, one just graduated from UMU, she has a degree in Environmental Science, so we are sending letters out to some of the companies like Bea Mountain, Fouta Corporation that doing cement for environmental engineering, so we have begun to tag them.

Because, the girl who doing mining engineering, since it is part of her requirement that she is an intern, this week we are

writing letters to some of the companies, we are hoping that they agree to accept them as intern.

I want to encourage those who are on our scholarships to continue to do well. I want to encourage those who were sponsored of our programs before to continue their efforts.