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Sao was 15 years old when a brutal civil war started in her country of Liberia. She dropped out of school and began to help her mother sell vegetables to raise money for her six siblings.

“I wanted to learn, I really wanted to go to school,” says Sao. “The war came, and it just spoiled everything. And nobody was there to help us.”
Sao spent the next 20 years trying to survive the war and the difficult years afterward. In a deserted mission in Bopolu City, Sao and her husband began to care for 30 war orphans. The couple, along with their two small children, relied on the generosity of friends and family to help them care for the orphans.

Sao had not given up her dream of learning to read, despite her enormous responsibilities. She prayed for an adult literacy class to open. When Samaritan’s Purse launched its program last year, she knew it was God answering her prayers.

Sao was the first to sign up for the literacy class. Despite having received a third grade education years earlier, Sao couldn’t read, spell, or even tell time. Sao is working hard in school now, knowing that she is serving as a role model to more than 30 small children.

“My dream is that they learn and be somebody,” Sao says.
In addition to her literacy classes, Sao is taking classes in animal husbandry and basic business. These classes are designed to teach the women the skills they need to sustain small businesses and to develop as successful entrepreneurs.

The women receive either 25 snails, a source of food in Liberia, or one male and two female rabbits from Samaritan’s Purse. The women are trained in how to care for these creatures, and once the snails or rabbits have produced offspring, the women give back an equal number to Samaritan’s Purse. These offspring are used for the following year’s husbandry classes.
The integrated program is empowering hundreds of Liberian women. They are learning to apply their new literacy and business skills into practical, real-life opportunities that will sustain them and their families.

Sao is raising rabbits. She plans to sell the offspring, using the income to support her extended family.

“I thank God that [this program] opened,” Sao says. “God answered my prayers.”

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