UNDP is working with UNFPA, the Peace-Building Support Office through the Liberia Multi-Partner Trust Fund (LMPTF) in collaboration with national partners, civil society and NGOs to design and implement a project titled "Socio-Economic Empowerment of Disadvantaged Youth in Liberia (SEED).

At a one-day consultation held in Monrovia, cross section of partners used the meeting to address issues around rehabilitation, training, reintegration, community engagement, mapping of areas to benefit, criteria on selection process and sustainability among others.

SEED is a pilot project that seeks to engage and target 500 "At risk Youth" (Zogoes) within Montserrado County, through innovative and impactful initiatives and processes aimed at rehabilitating, training and empowering them.

Implementation of the project according to the organizers and design of the program, is "strategic and catalytic" with an overall goal of creating awareness on the fact that the issue of young people at risk in the society is a "Time Bomb" that needs to be urgently and systematically addressed to sustain and maintain peace and stability.

The project will be used as an opportunity to attract more development partners to the need for extension and expansion, stimulate and accelerate resource mobilization, and investment opportunities that will create sustainability and ownership.

This unique project will work with this group of youth, motivate and mentor them to redirect their energies toward positive alternatives & a more promising future as an integral part of society.

Government of Liberia has endorsed the Project which adapts innovative result-based pilot approach that will consist of sensitization, rehabilitation, skills & economic empowerment & social reintegration as catalyst for transformation.

Presently, there is an ever increasing population of street-absorbed youth, who remain stigmatized & economically marginalized.

National and local partners during the consultation expressed interest on the need to address and engage at-risk youth in Liberian ghettos and slum communities.

The meeting held Thursday May 23, 2019, was used as an opportunity to engage in a mapping exercise that allowed for triangulation of "hot-zones" that have high concentration of at-risk Youth.

The areas include West Point, Red-light, and New Kru Town, parts of central Monrovia and Sinkor, Fish Market among others.

The Liberia Multi-Partner Trust Fund (LMPTF) is a donor-basket which harnesses catalytic resources towards efforts on peace and development after the drawdown of UNMIL.